


Gilded Cages

by stick2theplan



Category: Knives Out (2019)
Genre: Canon Continuation, F/F, Spoilers, families are complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:00:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23338021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stick2theplan/pseuds/stick2theplan
Summary: Meg Thrombey struggles to find her balance after the death of her grandfather.
Relationships: Marta Cabrera/Meg Thrombey
Comments: 49
Kudos: 444





	1. Forgiveness

“You must hate that housekeeper, huh?”

Meg looked up from her open wallet at the barista, dumbfounded.

There was only so much leeway professors would give for dead grandparents, even if your dead grandparent was Harlan Thrombey, so Meg had gone back to campus two days after Benoit Blanc’s investigation was officially closed. The story had been in the news, so people at Smith knew every publicly released detail and more than a few outrageous rumors by the time she returned. The barista was hardly the first person to bring it up; friends, professors, and every stranger she passed on the quad had something to say or something to ask.

They treated her so different. That had surprised Meg. Her life had been turned on its head, so of course she hadn’t expected to simply return to her regularly scheduled programming; she’d expected change. But she’d been thinking more along the lines of grief and therapy and planning for a now financially uncertain future, not the upheaval of all her interpersonal relationships. Some people were sympathetic and handled her with kid gloves, which was awkward but well intentioned. Others, though…Well, she’d lost a few friends. It was weird to have people bail on her over money that hadn’t been hers to begin with. Maybe she was better off without them in her life, but that hadn’t made it hurt any less.

She’d been grieving the losses of her grandfather, her financial safety net, any semblance of a normal family, and some valued friendships. All in all, Meg had been pretty sad and sorry for herself the last two weeks. This barista was the first person to make her angry.

“The housekeeper, Fran, was a lovely woman,” she said firmly, “and I liked her plenty, before my cousin murdered her.”

He seemed to notice her tone, but it didn’t stop him from saying, “You know what I mean. The one who got all your money. Pretty gross that she’s like your age and she and your grandpa…”

Meg saw red.

* * *

The friends she did still have practically dragged her out of Starbucks. Meg was fuming.

“How can he think?!”

“We don’t know,” said Hayley.

“Marta would never!”

“We know,” said Grace.

“I mean, it’s my grandad!”

“So gross,” agreed Amelia.

It was absolutely freezing outside, but Meg’s ears were hot and red. She looked back and forth at her friends on either side of her and asked, “You’re not just, like, placating me, are you?”

Grace scoffed. “Believe me, we would tell you if we thought Marta was a trash human,” she said. “She is not a gold digger.”

“So why does he think—Why would anyone think—?” Meg threw her hand up exasperatedly. “Marta’s been through enough. She doesn’t need this fucking slander.”

“You’ve _both_ been through a lot,” said Hayley pointedly.

Grace and Amelia both glared at her.

“And you know what’s not helping?” she continued.

“Hayley!” hissed Amelia.

“Keeping each other at arm’s length. Who’s that supposed to be good for?”

Meg blinked at Hayley. “I betrayed her,” she said flatly.

“Yeah, and you’ve been miserable about it every second since then. So call her and tell her, so you can both move on.”

“I’m not going to guilt her into forgiving me. That’s not fair.”

“Meg! Forgiveness is her prerogative! I know she called you and you ignored her. Just a shot in the dark here, but maybe she could use a friend right now, and you’re not there for her because you’re here shouting at baristas and feeling sorry for yourself.”

Coming up the path, a freshman with auburn hair and a thick Hufflepuff scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face was walking towards them, staring. Meg glared at her until she quickened her pace and scurried past. Then, she studied her other two friends.

“Is this what you _all_ think?”

Grace bore her teeth in a mix between a smile and a grimace. “Um, sort of?”

“You are, like, the only friend who could even begin to understand what she’s going through,” said Amelia. “Unless you think she’s on better terms with one of your satan-spawn cousins.”

Meg pressed her tongue to her teeth and decided it was time to change the subject.

* * *

When she got back to her room at the end of the day, Meg flopped down on her twin bed and stared at her message thread with Marta for a long time. She was too afraid, too vulnerable to call, but the last text she’d sent had been during the ordeal, and, if she sent one now, it would pop up directly beneath a reminder of why Meg shouldn’t be forgiven.

Deciding to take her grandfather’s advice, Meg pulled out one of her notebooks and flipped it open to a fresh page. Handwritten notes, he’d often said, were always better. “Writing down your emotions is an unpleasant task. It makes people feel good to know that you’d do something that you find unpleasant purely for their benefit.”

Meg filled both sides of the page with her small, cramped, handwritten emotions. When she was done, she carefully tore the apology letter out of her notebook, slid it into her bag, and went out to buy actual stamps and an envelope, because she was fully committed. She licked the envelope closed and neatly wrote her grandfather’s address on the front under _Miss Marta Cabrera_. And then she read the pickup times as she deposited her letter into the mailbox and immediately regretted all of it.

Handwritten notes were always better for those who received them. The same couldn’t be said for the people who wrote them and had to wait in purgatory for two to three business days.

When she told Hayley what she’d done, Hayley stared at her the same way she’d stared at the grad student who’d tried spell out her name with fireworks on the quad.

“What?”

“I just…people only do that in…” She shook her head. “Your family is _wild_.”

* * *

Marta called her four days later, in the middle of a lecture, and Meg nearly tripped over her bag in her haste to get up and out. She left everything in the lecture hall, including her coat, so all she could do was pace fifteen steps down the hall to get some privacy. Her fingers felt stiff as she answered the call.

“Marta?”

“Meg,” Marta said, and she sounded relieved.

“Yeah. Hi.”

“Hi.”

Meg took an aimless step and then did an abrupt about face and took a step in the other direction. “So…” she said.

“I got your letter.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I got it yesterday, actually, but I…” Marta paused, and Meg pressed the phone tighter to her ear, as though she might be able to hear Marta’s thoughts under the silence. “I didn’t think you’d pick up.”

“Really?”

“Well, you didn’t the first time I called. And you never called back. It’s been weeks.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d want to talk to me.”

“Meg, _I_ called _you_.”

“I know, but…I just—I didn’t want you to feel like you had to forgive me.”

“I know. I read the letter.”

“Right.”

“Meg, I forgave you the day it happened. The second I saw your face, I—I thought I told you that.”

Meg slumped against the bannister at the foot of the stairwell. “You didn’t,” she said. “Or, I don’t think you did. I don’t really remember. It’s all such a—”

“Mess.”

“I was going to say, “a blur,” but, yeah, it’s kind of a mess.”

“Can’t we just be friends again?”

“Yes,” Meg said quickly. “Please.”

* * *

In the final week before winter break, life had finally started getting better. Things had settled down a bit, she actually felt prepared for her finals, and she and Marta were speaking again. Then Meg got the email.

Her tuition payment for next semester was late.

* * *

Despite the constant bickering, Meg had had some reservations about turning her back on her family.

Those all went away when she found out that Grandad had cut a check for her final semester and Mom had blown it on a new product launch for her skincare brand—some kiwi-avocado eye cream that had failed immediately because it dyed people’s skin green. That information surfaced shortly after Meg got home for winter break, and she started packing the second her fury waned enough that her hands stopped shaking.

Mom had left the apartment after their blowout, so Meg didn’t have to answer any questions about where she was going until she was already gone. Good thing, too, because she was so angry she might’ve simply told the truth, and then the whole family would’ve been called, and she’d never have made it out of there.

When Mom finally did call, Meg told her that she was staying with a friend because she needed a break from the family. She hung up the phone and turned around to see Marta looking at her curiously.

“I don’t want to give them another reason to hate you,” she said. “It’s not really a lie, anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this in my head the moment I walked out of the theater back in November, but I didn't write it because there didn't seem to be any interest. But I just watched the will-reading scene again and noticed that, while everyone else was shouting at the lawyer, Meg was looking at Marta with concern and not accusation. It made me feel all the more confident that Meg's betrayal was more accident than ill-intent, and even a somewhat out of character plot-device, if I'm being really picky. 
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you think. Comments will keep me sane during this pandemic.


	2. Adjustment

Marta was staying in the house.

She’d shared that information with Meg shortly after their reconciliation. As much as she loved her mother and sister, they didn’t understand what she was dealing with, and that had made her feel more alone than actually being alone. So she’d packed a small bag and gone to the house. It made her feel closer to Harlan, she’d said, and she needed his guidance now more than ever.

And, when Meg called saying she needed to be anywhere but home right now, she’d been welcomed with open arms.

“Good thing I didn’t take your room,” Marta said with a smile as she helped Meg carry her stuff inside.

“Had you considered it?” Meg asked.

“Yes. I wasn’t going to sleep in Harlan’s room, and you’re the one I’m closest to, besides him.” She grunted as she heaved Meg’s duffle onto the bed and turned to see Meg grinning at her from the doorway. “Don’t let it get to your head.”

“I won’t,” Meg said cheerily.

“Anyway, I thought sleeping here would feel the least strange, but then I thought you’re the only one who might still be willing to visit, after everything, and you should have your room, if you did.”

“And here I am!”

“Yes.”

“So where did you wind up choosing?” asked Meg. She leaned around the doorframe and looked up and across the hall at the other doors on that floor.

Marta stepped up beside her and wrinkled her nose. “Linda and Richard’s.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I know.”

“I mean, it’s probably the nicest bedroom in the house, but still.” At that, Marta looked a little overwhelmed, so Meg playfully bumped her shoulder. “Hey, want to take some hot chocolate into the living room?”

“Sure,” Marta said gratefully. “That would be nice.”

In the kitchen, Marta dug out the Swiss Miss and a jug of milk while Meg stretched up on her toes to reach for the electric kettle. It was heavier than she expected, and her elbows buckled slightly from the weight. She wasn’t all that worried—if it fell, it’d hit the counter before her, anyway—but suddenly Marta was there beside her, gently lowering it to the countertop.

With the electric kettle, making their hot chocolate was a pretty quick task, but they were slowed down by Marta’s apparent resolve to scrub down everything they touched. She didn’t even put the spoons in the dishwasher; she cleaned them by hand. Meg didn’t mind, per se, but it definitely wasn’t standard Marta Cabrera form. She was neat, not anal.

Once they’d made their hot chocolate and relocated to the couch, Meg watched with amusement as Marta gingerly placed a coaster on the table under her mug. She was moving about the house as if she expected someone to yell at her for doing something wrong.

“Can I put my feet up?” Meg asked, gesturing to the coffee table.

Marta stared at her in surprise. “You’re asking me?”

“Well, it’s your furniture, now, isn’t it? This is your house. You own a house. How cool is that?”

The crease between Marta’s eyebrows that had seemed ever-present lately deepened.

“That’s another reason I’ve been staying here,” Marta said. “I didn’t want any of this. Really, I didn’t. But, now that it’s mine, I just…I have this fear that I’m going to wake up and it’ll be gone.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Meg said, reaching over to wrap her fingers gently around Marta’s forearm. “I won’t let that happen, I swear. I know I fucked up before, but I have your back this time.”

Marta smiled tremulously at her, and Meg’s heart hurt just a little too much.

* * *

“There’s not all that much food for dinner,” said Marta as the clock ticked towards seven pm. “There’s food to cook with, but—” She sighed. “I should cook. I should. That would be the…the hostly thing to do.”

“We’ll order pizza,” said Meg.

“I’m so bad at this.”

“No, you’re not. Don’t worry about it. That Emily Post shit is sexist as hell, anyway. You’re letting me stay here. You don’t have to cook for me, too.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. Pizza’s perfect.”

“I’ll cook tomorrow.”

“You don’t—”

“I want to. Not tonight, but yes, tomorrow.”

Meg grinned. “I look forward to it. If you want to place the order, I’ve spent most of today either packing or unpacking or sitting in a car for hours at a time. I’m going to take a quick shower.”

“Be my guest,” Marta said.

The water pressure at Harlan’s house was unlike any other facilities in Meg’s life. Whenever she visited her grandfather, she always relished her showers. This time, though, the searing hot cascade was a hollow comfort as the weight of the day washed over her.

Without the initial, single-minded anger that carried her here or the distraction of Marta’s company, Meg was overwhelmed by sadness and frustration, like a wave had knocked her off her feet and pulled her underwater. With her hands pressed to the cool tile and the water burning her back, she cried, despite herself.

She cried because her mom was selfish and irresponsible and immature, and because, after three and a half years of constant hard work, she might not be able to graduate. She cried because, even though she didn’t really care about the money, being cut out of Grandad’s will stung like a rebuke, and because it felt like she was being punished for something she’d had no part in. She cried for her grandfather and for Fran and because her cousin was a murderer and she’d barely slept all week. She cried because she missed her dad.

And then she realized she hadn’t packed shampoo.

Cursing quietly, Meg slipped out of the steamy shower and started shivering immediately. The towel she hastily wrapped around herself didn’t help all that much, and she cringed as she stepped gingerly from the bathmat to the frigid tile floor.

There was nothing in any of the cabinets except someone’s leftover shaving cream, a bunch of hand towels, and a refill jug for the soap dispenser. For half a second, Meg considered using the hand soap, but, ultimately, she resigned herself to what needed to be done.

She cracked the door open and called out, “Marta?”

“Yes?”

“Can you come here for a second?”

While she waited for Marta to come, she scrubbed her face with a corner of the towel, hoping to either wipe away the evidence of her breakdown or redden her whole face enough that her eyes and nose didn’t stand out.

“What happened?” Marta asked as she hurried up the hallway. Something shifted in her voice as she came into view, and she stumbled a little over her words. “Are you alright?”

Meg laughed weakly and held the towel tighter to her chest. “I’m fine, but I forgot my shampoo and conditioner at home.”

“Oh! I’ll get…hey, what’s wrong?”

“I’m fine,” Meg repeated.

“Meg—”

“Marta, I’m freezing, here.”

“O-okay. I’ll be right back.”

Meg leaned heavily against the doorframe and then banged her forehead against it once for good measure. She closed her eyes in defeat. When she opened her eyes at the sound of footsteps, Marta was back with two salon-brand bottles that probably originally belonged to Linda.

“Here you go,” she said. She was oddly fidgety.

“Thanks.”

“Meg, are you sure you’re okay?”

“No, but can I at least finish my shower before we talk about it?”

“Of course,” Marta spluttered. Her gaze fell from Meg’s face to the floor, but she seemed to rethink that, because it snapped back up, and she maintained eye contact as she backed away. “Yes. Sorry. I’ll go…set the table.”

In the moment, Meg didn’t have the bandwidth to worry what that was about.

With the appeal of the shower long gone, Meg washed her hair on autopilot, towel dried it, and dragged herself to her room. She flopped down, face first, on the bed and just pressed her face into the pillow for a long moment. Then, she picked up her phone and texted her friends.

“This was a mistake.”

A reply came through almost instantly from Hayley. “Why?”

“We only just got back on speaking terms and I threw myself into her space full-time. What was I thinking?”

“In for a penny, in for a pound.”

Right.

After digging through her bag for comfortable clothes, Meg more or less pulled herself together and was able to paste on a smile as she trudged down the stairs with a thick Navajo cardigan wrapped around her like a safety blanket. As she neared the bottom of the stairs she heard the delivery boy say, “Muchas gracias, señorita,” and the smile fell away.

“Did he assume you don’t speak English?” she asked hotly.

“No,” said Marta, laughing fondly. “He noticed my accent and asked if he could practice his Spanish because he has an oral exam tomorrow.”

“I bet,” muttered Meg under her breath, and she sullenly followed Marta to the table. “How much do I owe you for the pizza?”

Marta set the box on the table and flipped it open to take a slice before even sitting down. “My treat,” she said. “Don’t argue with me. I’ve never had money before and suddenly…let me treat you for once.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay.”

“Meg, what’s wrong?”

Meg ran her fingernail along the curved, carved arm of her chair, took a deep breath, and let the details of the fight with her mom spill out. Under the table, she pinched her leg to keep herself from crying again. A weight she didn’t even know she’d been under lifted when Marta got out of her chair and wrapped her arms around Meg’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know, but I’m still sorry you’re dealing with this.”

“Thanks,” Meg sniffled.

“I could pay—”

“Don’t. Don’t offer.”

Marta loosened her grip to look Meg in the eyes. “Why not?” she asked.

“I’m not here to use you for the money.”

“I know that.”

“I know you do, but I just need this to not be about that, okay? I don’t want to think about it right now.”

Though she seemed reluctant to let it go, Marta said, “Alright. Let me know if you change your mind.”

“Sit down and eat your pizza, Daddy Warbucks,” Meg said with a smile.


	3. Redesign

When Meg dragged herself into the kitchen in search of coffee the next morning, she was still half asleep. At home, she probably would’ve stayed in bed a few more hours, but she’d never been able to sleep past 8:30 in this house; FOMO always got the better of her. There wouldn’t be any wild family antics to entertain her today, but she got up anyway, a little bit awed by the silence. When she saw what awaited her in the kitchen, she wondered if she wasn’t actually still asleep. 

Marta Cabrera was leaning casually against the kitchen island, cradling a mug and wearing a short, silk pajama set. Her lean frame, usually covered up by high necklines and long pants, was on full display as she relaxed there like a Maxim model. It was exactly the sort of thing Meg’s brain would conjure up and not at all the sort of thing the actual Marta Cabrera would do.

Meg had had the occasional dirty daydream about Marta pretty much since the moment they’d met. Once they’d gotten to know each other, though, Meg had realized she valued their friendship too much to risk it on a potential fling. Plus, the one time she’d been drunk enough to think about making a move, Fran had wandered in and sat down on the couch with them, effectively killing that moment.

Point being, Meg wasn’t all that upset to stumble upon this relatively scantily-clad Marta, but she was definitely confused.

“Um, hi?” she said.

Marta looked up and offered Meg a warm, easy smile. “Good morning,” she said languidly.

“There enough for me?” Meg asked, gesturing to the freshly brewed pot of coffee at her elbow.

“Help yourself.”

Except Marta didn’t move out of the way. To get to the coffee, Meg had to sidle up so close that she could feel through her socks where Marta’s bare feet had warmed the otherwise cool floor tiles. As she poured, her forearm slid against Marta’s bare bicep, and Meg truly wondered if she was still dreaming.

Marta, meanwhile, seemed completely unperturbed by Meg’s proximity.

The safest route, Meg decided, was to act as casual as Marta and pretend this wasn’t totally bizarre.

“You like eggs?” she asked, pulling open the fridge.

“I’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“Cool. Can you grab the salt and pepper?” Meg asked, setting a skillet on the stovetop.

Marta touched Meg’s waist as she placed the shakers on the counter, and Meg cracked the first egg a little harder than she’d intended. This was _definitely_ weird.

Marta had never been particularly handsy, but now Meg wondered if that was because of the level of professionalism she’d always tried to maintain while she was on the clock. Every time they’d hung out in person had been at the house, with Marta technically acting in her capacity as Grandad’s caretaker, and physicality wasn’t exactly something that came through over text or phone calls. Maybe this was Marta’s normal state.

“Aren’t you cold?” Meg asked eventually, unable to resist.

Marta shrugged. “I can’t sleep if I’m too hot.”

“Huh.”

The weirdness gradually decreased over breakfast, though Meg was pretty sure she felt Marta looking at her sideways a few times. It was almost like Marta was waiting for her to do something, but she had no idea what. She needed a distraction.

“I think we should clean some of the junk out of this house,” she said as she put her plate in the dishwasher. Fear and sadness clouded over Marta’s expression, and Meg stepped closer and reached out reassuringly. “Hey. Sorry. I didn’t mean—we don’t have to touch Grandad’s stuff yet. I think you should, eventually, but we can work up to it.”

“I don’t want to throw him away,” Marta said softly.

“I know,” Meg said, wrapping her in a hug, trying to bleed comfort into her friend. She felt tears well in her own eyes, but she blinked them away. “I’d never expect you to, but there is a way to keep the things that matter and also make space for this to be your home.

“You don’t need parking tickets and travel brochures from the 90s, or Linda or Walt’s shit, and I know for a fact that I’ve left plenty of junk here over the years.”

“I don’t mind your stuff being here.”

“Thanks. It’s still worth reorganizing, though. And my room _would_ be the easiest place to start. I mean, if you want to help me. You don’t have to, obviously.”

Marta stepped back and looked at her, wiping away her tears with her palms, almost like a child. And then she smirked, a little deviously. “I bet you have journals, don’t you?”

“Maybe this was a mistake,” Meg said, rolling her eyes and leading the way back to her bedroom.

“You were right,” Marta said from the doorway, eyeing the frost on the window. “It is cold.” She disappeared and returned wearing sweats, and suddenly the reserved, understated Marta that Meg knew was back.

They started with the toys that were scattered about on low shelves and atop dressers. There weren’t many, but Marta treated each like a window into Meg’s childhood. She fished an old, battered Bratz doll out from under the dresser and held it up, surprise and delight writ across her expression.

“Some of these were unwanted Christmas gifts,” Meg said defensively. “Linda and Walt never had any idea what to get me.”

“What _did_ you want, then?”

“At that age? Probably a spy kit. I was really into spy movies at like eight or nine, but it bothered me that Bond girls didn’t have more autonomy. I wanted to prove that girls could be cool gentlemen spies, too.” She fiddled with a long-dead tamagotchi. “They still bother me, by the way; Bond girls.”

“I’m sure they do.”

“What about you? What did you want for Christmas when you were nine?”

“A bike,” said Marta without hesitation. “A shiny, blue bike I saw in the window of a shop every day on my way home from school.”

“Your first bike?”

“No, my sister and I shared one, but it was a rusty hand-me-down. I got socks that year, instead. My mother was saving money to send us here.”

“So neither of us got what we wanted that year,” Meg said. “Probably for the best.”

“Mhm, you’re too loud to be a spy,” said Marta with a straight face.

“Hey! Rude. Speaking of your mom, how’s she doing? You’ve been talking to lawyers, right?”

“Good. She’s good. Apparently, having all this money makes family-based immigration _much_ easier.”

“Bullshit,” Meg said angrily. “It’s such bullshit. I mean, I’m so glad it’s working in your favor now, but you shouldn’t have to be a millionaire.”

“It’s okay, Meg.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. It’s not _good_ , but we’re okay right now. Let’s focus on this,” Marta said, holding up the Bratz doll, “and you can solve the immigration problem another day.”

The knot of regret in the pit of Meg’s stomach loosened a little bit more.

They sorted the toys into two piles: donations and trash. Every time they came upon one of Joni’s tchotchkes, it went, reluctantly, into a third pile, referred to by Meg as “Mom’s shit.” By the time they’d moved onto the books and added a “keep” category, the piles had spread too much and were starting to be unmanageable.

Marta left to get trash bags to contain the mess. While she waited, Meg set to alphabetizing one of the lower shelves, where the children’s books were concentrated, absently singing as she did so. She got through the first shelf and moved on to the next one, lost in her own world.

Her gaze happened cross the doorway as she rolled a crick out of her neck, and she jumped about three feet when she saw Marta leaning against the doorframe with a cup of tea and several trash bags, smirking at her.

“Jesus! How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to know why you never pursued a career on Broadway.”

“Ouch,” said Meg.

“You’re very good at plenty of other things,” said Marta in consolation, handing over a few bags. They started transferring the piles to them, with Meg being considerably more careful with the donations than Joni’s crystals and crap. She was still very mad at her mother.

Sorting through all the books took a while. It was only fitting that Harlan Thrombey’s grandkids had extensive libraries. Eventually, Marta plucked the last paperback off the last shelf. It was clearly well-loved, with a crease-lined spine, spots of color rubbed off the cover, and many dog-eared pages. “Tell me about this,” Marta requested.

Instead, Meg asked, “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“We’ve been looking at my boring old shit for hours, and you still look like you’re actually interested in it—in my pretentious childhood.”

Marta looked almost hurt. “I am interested.”

“Why?”

“Because I am interested in you and what makes you you, and this is part of that.”

Still convinced that Marta was very good at hiding her boredom, Meg pursed her lips. She wondered, not for the first time, how selective Marta could get with her answers before truth gave way to lie gave way to vomit.

“Meg, every time I’ve asked you a question about these things, you’ve asked me something in return about my childhood.”

“Yeah, because we haven’t really talked about it before, and I want to know…” Meg trailed off. “Oh,” she said. “I guess I just think your life is way more interesting than mine.”

“You think that because you know all the answers to your own story. For me, there are many mysteries in you. Like this.” Marta held up the raggedy paperback.

“It’s embarrassing,” Meg said, taking the book from her and turning it over in her hands. If she had been waiting for a moment, this was it.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“I know, but I will.”

Meg closed her eyes and opened the book and she was ten years old again, sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading those last pages for the first time. Ransom, twenty one and emerging into his final asshole form, barreled in and snatched the book out of her hands.

_“Ransom! Give it back!”_

_“Ooh-hoo-hoo, look at this,” he said, scanning the page. “This is what you’ve been obsessed with all week? We should go tell Granddad that this is the type of book you like.”_

_“No!” Meg said, reaching for it as Ransom held it above his head. He was so much taller than her. “No, I-I don’t even like it. It’s…it’s weird. You don’t have to tell anyone.”_

_“Then we should just throw it out.”_

_“No!”_

_“Why not?”_

_“Ransom, give it back. Please.”_

_“I thought you said you didn’t like it.”_

_“I don’t. I swear. Please, just give it back and don’t…don’t tell anyone. Please.” Meg started crying. “Please give it back. It was from my dad. Please.”_

_Ransom huffed, as if this was less fun than he’d thought it’d be. “Whatever,” he said, dropping the book on the floor._

When Meg opened her eyes, Marta’s eyebrows were pulled together in confusion. “What didn’t you want him to—”

“It’s gay,” Meg said, ripping off the band-aid. “ _I’m_ gay. And I still can’t believe Ransom never outed me.”

To her credit, Marta looked mildly surprised, but she didn’t ask any of the questions Meg had been dreading or issue frantic clarifications or proclamations about the nature of their friendship. She didn’t start holding Meg at arm’s length. She didn’t linger on it at all. “Your dad knew, though?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Meg said. “At that age, _I_ didn’t even know yet. This book was kind of my first inkling. He might’ve just bought it without realizing, but…almost ten years and I still haven’t had the guts to come out to my family, but I kind of like to think he knew and approved.”

“I wish I could have known him,” Marta said, taking the book and placing it reverently back on the shelf with the other keepers. She laid her hand over Meg’s, and Meg realized with startling clarity that this was the first time since breakfast that Marta had initiated contact.

“So do I.”

Marta leaned back on her hands and surveyed the progress they’d made. “Why don’t we call it a day and have some lunch?” she suggested.

“Please. I’m starving.”

* * *

They continued in that vein for the next few days, purging relics from Meg’s childhood for the first half of the day and entertaining themselves and each other with books and games and movies into the evening. Meg didn’t want to spend her entire break cooped up in the house, but it was nice to have this time not only to reconnect with Marta, but to learn so many new details about her friend.

Youthful frivolity and adolescent adversity wasn’t all Marta had been keeping to herself, though.

* * *

After the third night in a row of hearing creaking on the stairs, Meg decided to investigate. She found nothing in Grandad’s room or his study, so she poked her head in the library, the living room, and the sitting room before tracking down Marta in the kitchen. Scrunched up with her knees to her chest and a steaming mug in her hands, she looked so young.

“Hey,” Meg whispered, sitting down next to her at the island. “You okay?”

“Yes. Yes, it’s just…it’s the nightmares.”

“Nightmares?”

It was a long time before Marta said anything more. So long, in fact, that Meg thought she wasn’t going to. Meg worried that she’d overstepped. She should’ve stayed in bed and let Marta have her privacy.

Then Marta looked her dead in the eye and said, “I saw him do it.”

“Who, Ransom?”

“Harlan.”

“Oh. Oh, _shit_ , Marta. Jesus, are you—have you talked to anyone about this?”

“No. God, who would I—who would I talk to?”

“Well, you could talk to me. If you want.”

So she did.

Staring intently into her mug as if reading the answers from the tea leaves, she told Meg about Grandad knocking over the go board and mixing up the medication bottles. She recounted her panic and horror as he gave her self-preservation instructions and then slit his own throat to protect her. She wondered, still, how he could have done such a thing so easily.

Meg already knew the broad strokes of Ransom’s part from the police, but Marta retold it in context—how her own mix-up had negated his simple frame-job, and how Fran’s involvement threw another wrench in his scheme. She described finding Fran in the laundromat and trying to save her, then tricking Ransom into confession, and then Ransom pulling a knife from the display and driving it into her chest, only for the blade to give way and reveal it to be a prop.

At first, all Meg could do was shake her head, but that seemed to add to Marta’s distress, so she found the words to say, “Holy shit. And you’ve been processing this alone?”

“Yes.”

“How?!”

“Not well.”

“And the nightmares?”

“Almost every night since Harlan’s death.”

Meg scrubbed her hand over her face. “Jesus,” she said again. “Listen, I am here for you however you need me to be, but I think you need a real, trained therapist, too.”

“You’re probably right,” Marta admitted, “but I’m not ready to pick it apart with a stranger. Not yet.”

“Alright. How can I help?”

“I don’t…”

“C’mon, Marta, there’s got to be something I can do.”

For the first time in the whole exchange, Marta set down her mug and turned her whole body to fully face Meg. Even in the moonlit darkness, Meg could see that her eyes, which had been bloodshot but dry before, were now red and puffy. She looked so miserable.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she said. “Every time I close my eyes, I feel so…so alone.”

“I’ll stay with you in Linda and Richard’s room,” Meg offered.

Seeing the grief and turmoil and, most of all, the gratitude in Marta’s eyes, Meg didn’t even stop to think about all the ways this could be such a bad idea. She just grabbed her pillow and carried it down the hall.


	4. Acknowledgement

The night after offering herself up as a glorified security blanket, Meg went out with some of her friends from high school while Marta had her mother and sister over for dinner. She hadn’t been asked to make herself scarce, but the thought of being there while Marta played hostess felt like an imposition, and Meg had wanted to catch up with her friends, anyway.

It was well after midnight by the time Meg left the bar, and she spent the entire Uber ride home wondering where she was supposed to sleep. She figured one night of her presence wasn’t enough to make Marta’s nightmares go away permanently, but they hadn’t talked about it, and it would probably be weird to just assume she was welcome without an invitation.

When she slipped quietly through the front door, though, she almost tripped over Marta, who was sitting on the steps with a blanket around her shoulders.

“You’re still up,” she said stupidly.

“And you’re drunk,” said Marta, but she was smiling.

“Tipsy,” Meg argued for no particular reason. It wasn’t true.

“Sure. Do you need water?”

“Nope.”

“Alright. Come on, then. Upstairs.”

“I think I’m gonna have to go home for Christmas,” Meg said sullenly, leaning heavily on the bannister. The hand hovering at her elbow stilled momentarily as Marta paused. 

“If that’s what you want to do.”

“It’s not, but you know my family.”

“You can make this decision when you’re sober.”

They reached the top of the stairs, and Meg flipped her hand over to squeeze Marta’s wrist. “Wait right here,” she said. “I have to change.”

She emerged in sweatpants and a threadbare BB&N t-shirt to find Marta coming up the stairs with a glass of water and a bottle of Advil. Marta headed straight for the bedroom, apparently trusting Meg to make it fifteen feet down the hall on her own.

“You can deny it now,” she called over her shoulder, “but you might need this in the morning.”

“You’re too nice to me,” Meg said so, so fondly.

“You better not throw up.”

“At least I only run that risk when I’m drunk.”

And, just like that, the new sleeping arrangements were cemented.

* * *

The last of Meg’s belongings, and perhaps the most tedious to sort through, were the boxes of paper files on the top shelf of the closet. Meg had put this final phase off for a good three days. With Christmas looming, she was feeling pretty bah-humbug, and diving into the archives of her life gave her the eerie impression that she would soon be visited by three ghosts.

Inside the boxes was an assortment of things she’d written from approximately six to twelve years old, including the journals Marta had been looking forward to. It occurred to Meg belatedly that these files were already boxed up and could go right into storage, but, by then, Marta was already reading one of the book reviews she’d done for her grandfather at age ten.

It was all pre-teen stuff—first chapters of fantasy stories and streaky watercolors and mementos that she’d never gotten around to scrapbooking. Embarrassing, but harmless. After Dad died and she and her mom moved into an apartment, they hadn’t had enough room to freely accumulate that stuff, so Meg had gotten used to making digital copies of anything worth saving. Nothing in those boxes was less than nine years old.

“You should finish this,” Marta said, holding up a neon green composition book. “I want to know what happens to the time traveling bear.”

* * *

“Two thousand dollars. That’s what this costs,” Marta said one night, setting a bottle of 25 year Macallan scotch whisky on the table in the library with a decisive thunk.

Meg looked up from her book and nearly choked on her own tongue.

“Rich people. It’s unbelievable.”

“Don’t look at me,” Meg said. “I don’t know any—woah, are you going to drink that?”

Marta shrugged, peeling away the seal. “Might as well. There are two more in the cellar.”

“Jeez.”

“You want?”

“Well, I’m not letting you drink alone,” said Meg, laughing in disbelief. She got off the couch and crouched down in front of the liquor cabinet. “Wait, don’t pour yet. If we’re going to do this, we should do it right.”

*

The tumblers were heavy and intricately cut, and Meg was pleased with herself as she slowly rotated hers and watched the scotch glow amber in the low light of the library.

“Do you like whisky?” she asked.

“I’ve only tried it a few times. Two grand, this better not taste like anything I’ve had before.”

“Cheers.”

“To us,” said Marta, lifting her glass and tilting it in Meg’s direction.

The scotch burned the second it hit the back of Meg’s throat and proceeded to settle in her chest like a hot coal. She tried her best not to cough. “Well, that’s alcohol, alright,” she concluded.

Marta, however, was studying her glass contemplatively. “This is bad,” she said eventually.

“Not a scotch person?”

“No, I think I am, is the problem.”

“It makes sense, I guess,” Meg said. “Scotch is, like, the library alcohol. If you’re drinking anything in front of the fire in your personal library, it’s scotch.”

“And I’m a library person?”

“I mean, yeah. You do look most at home curled up with a book in an armchair.”

“I suppose that’s why Harlan and I got along,” Marta mused. She looked at Meg with her own book in her own armchair. “You’re not?”

“Nah, I’m an SJW. We drink vodka and use the bottles to make molotov cocktails.”

“Very funny.”

“Uncle Walt would probably freak if he saw us drinking this,” Meg said as she took a second tentative sip.

“I should give it to him.”

“What? No, absolutely not.”

“As a show of good faith. For Christmas.” Marta took another sip herself, closed her eyes, and pouted. “Maybe just the one bottle.”

“You shouldn’t have to give them gifts to make up for _them_ being awful to _you_.”

“They weren’t awful, just sad and confused.”

“Awful. Me included.”

“No, not you. The rest of them…only a little.”

“I can’t believe I’m spending Christmas with them.”

“Meg, they’re your family.”

“Lucky me.”

They read in comfortable silence for a while. Meg nursed her scotch and soaked up the words of Bob Woodward. She wondered, forlornly, how someone who had marked history so indelibly could come to sound so resigned. He, of all people, had to know his own potential to change the world. If the man who’d exposed Watergate had grown acquiescent, what could she expect to accomplish? It was heavy stuff.

Pushing her hair back from her face, Meg prepared to pose these questions to Marta. Her attention was instead caught by the bottle of scotch and the fact that it was now only three-quarters full.

“Did you drink all of that?”

Marta slowly blinked up at her and smiled guiltily.

“Dude. That’s like four hundred and fifty dollars worth of scotch.”

“It’s _so_ good.”

“Oh my god, you’re drunk _,_ ” said Meg, delighted.

Marta started to shake her head as if to deny it, and Meg scrambled out of her chair, frantically looking for some kind of bowl. “Woah, woah, woah. Don’t say anything! Don’t—wait, can you lie when you’re drunk?”

“I don’t know,” Marta said, her eyes wide and innocent.

Meg wavered for half a second and then shook her head. “As much as I’m dying to find out, I really don’t want to clean up vomit tonight.”

“How do you think I feel?” asked Marta, waving her hands helplessly and slurring her words quite a bit. “Do you know how many times I threw up during Blanc’s investigation?” She wrinkled her nose, stood up with purpose, swayed a bit, and marched off.

“Woah, hey, Marta! Where—where are you going?” Meg asked, hurrying after her.

“To check something.”

“Can’t it wait?”

In lieu of a response, Marta flung open the side door and strode out onto the porch, ignoring the below-freezing temperature and Meg’s corresponding protestations about the below-freezing temperature. She leaned over a copper pot, sniffed at it, and reared back with a frown.

“Someone’s going to have to deal with that,” she said as she breezed by Meg on her way back into the house.

Back in the library, she plopped bonelessly onto the sofa. Meg sat down beside her, mildly put out by their adventure to the tundra but more so amused by Marta’s antics.

“You’re so pretty,” Marta said suddenly. “It’s not fair.”

Meg blushed and let her head fall back so she didn’t have to make eye contact as she said, “Don’t even. You’re gorgeous.” Then, because she was maybe a masochist, she lifted her head to see Marta’s reaction.

That little crease formed between Marta’s eyebrows and she seemed to want to argue, but she must have decided against it, because she just said, “You have no idea.” She reached for her scotch.

“Hey, no, no, no. I think you’ve had enough of that.”

“I just want to finish this little bit.”

“You can finish it another time,” Meg said firmly, prying the tumbler from her grasp. “Right now, you look like you’re about to fall on your face.”

“My gorgeous face.”

“Yes. You’re a beautiful drunk. Come on.”

As they trekked up to the bedroom, Meg wondered if they’d come to some kind of equilibrium where one of them always had to be clear-headed enough to take care of the other. Maybe that was a good thing. Marta had never really mentioned having friends besides Grandad, and she had her mom and sister, but she seemed to be the caretaker in those relationships, too. Maybe she needed to know that Meg could be that for her; that they were equals. Maybe—

“So many layers,” mumbled Marta as she stood in the middle of the bedroom, crossed her arms, and grabbed the hem of her sweater.

Before Meg could even process what was happening, Marta’s sweater was on the floor.

_Shit._

Somehow, despite the drunkenness, Marta’s fingers were nimble enough to manage the buttons of her shirt with ease—it had to be muscle memory—and Meg stared, wide-eyed, as the shirt gaped open to reveal a lacy black bra. Marta unzipped her jeans, and Meg finally shook herself out of her shocked stupor, but not before catching a glimpse of the matching underwear.

“Woah-kay,” Meg spluttered, turning away. “You change. I’m gonna go…um…yeah.”

She took her time changing into her pajamas and fetching a bottle of water from downstairs. When she returned, Marta, mercifully wearing a t-shirt and flannel pants, was on her knees in front of the toilet, her cheek against the seat.

“That was a quick turnaround. How you doing?” Meg asked.

Marta looked up at her mournfully and made no attempt to lift her head.

“That good, huh?”

“I’ll feel better once I’ve puked.”

“Do you need help with that?”

“Please.”

“Okay, let’s see. Have you forgiven me?”

Marta’s face went as serious as was possible given that it was halfway inside a toilet bowl. “Yes,” she said firmly.

Nothing happened.

“What about my family? Have you forgiven them?”

“Yes,” she said again, with less conviction.

The lie came back up with the scotch. Meg rubbed soothing circles into Marta’s back and focused on reading the back of the hand lotion bottle to avoid watching. As bad as she felt for Marta in the moment, she couldn’t deny her own relief at finally having solid confirmation that there was no resentment left between them.

Unscathed was a long lost pipe dream, but, somehow, they might just get through it all okay.

* * *

There were voices coming from Grandad’s office when Meg came downstairs shortly after 11 the next morning. The door was open, and Meg tiptoed towards it to investigate. First, she saw Marta sitting behind Grandad’s desk with her most attentive listening face on. Meg inched further forward, trying to get an angle around the door. Whoever was sitting opposite Marta was a man, and his voice sounded so familiar. Then he scooted forward to pass a paper across the desk.

That was Alan Stevens.

The Thrombey family attorney.

A man her aunt and uncle spoke to more regularly than they called each other.

Meg froze and slowly withdrew, tried to creep back into the foyer. Too late.

“Meg?”

“Heeyy, Mr. Stevens,” she said, poking her head around the doorframe.

“What are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know. Visiting.”

“Hm.”

Meg fiddled with the sleeves of her cardigan. “Look,” she said, “you didn’t see me here, okay?”

Bewildered, Mr. Stevens glanced back and forth between her and Marta, who shrugged. “The only person I’m meeting with today is Miss Cabrera,” he said.

“Great.” She made to leave but then hesitated and looked at Marta. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine, Meg. We just wanted to finalize a few things before the holidays.”

“Okay. I’m going to head out. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Have fun.”

* * *

There were only two days left until Christmas Eve, and she’d been avoiding the rest of her family like the plague, but something that defied explanation prompted Meg to pay Ransom a visit. She still couldn’t really wrap her head around what he’d done. Sure, he was an asshole, but he was also her flesh and blood. Her family. They’d grown up in the same soil. Where, between magic marker days and now, had he become capable of murder? Was it something in the way he was raised, slowly, over time, or did it just happen all at once that night when he snapped? How had she not seen it coming?

When she sat down, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. The plastic of the visitor’s chair was uncomfortably cold, as was the telephone receiver. Ransom smirked at her.

“I hear you’re shacking up with the nurse.”

“I hear you’re looking at fifty to life,” she said instinctively, before it hit her. “Wait, how—who told you?”

“Oh shit, it’s true!” he said, gleeful.

“Ransom, who told you? Who knows?”

“This is priceless.”

“Ransom! God, I hate you.”

For some reason, that dampened his enjoyment a tiny bit. “Don’t get your panties in a twist,” he said dismissively. “No one knows. Mom said you fucked off to stay with some friend and that, for all Aunt Joni knows, you could be living in “some kind of drug den.” I took a shot in the dark you went for something a little more straight-laced.”

Meg pressed two fingers to her temple, unsure whether it was better or worse that Ransom had figured it out for himself. She was probably doomed. Anything she said from there on out would only get her into more trouble. Ransom had this way of seeing through people without even trying. For example, “straight-laced” really was the perfect way to describe Marta, with her buttoned-up button-ups and her versatile white Keds. Of course, it felt antithetical to the image Meg now saw every time she closed her eyes. Black lace and…

“It wasn’t a bad idea, seducing her. Maybe I should’ve tried that.”

Meg bristled, feeling like he’d somehow read her mind. “It’s not like that!” she snapped and regretted it immediately when Ransom’s smirk widened. After all this time, she should’ve known better than to let him get under her skin.

The penitentiary jumpsuits were white, and it reminded Meg of the astronaut costume Ransom had had when they were young. He used to wear it all the time—even to bed—and say he was going to be a space detective. He hadn’t ever been a nice kid, but he’d had goals, at least. It was weird, now, to wonder where all that ambition had gone.

“What’s it like, then?” he asked.

“What?”

“With you and Nurse Feel Good.”

Meg scowled, but this conversation wouldn’t go anywhere if she fought him every time he tried to push her buttons, so she answered the question.

“We’re friends. She actually listens to me and doesn’t write off the things I care about. She asks questions because she wants to know the answers. She doesn’t have to remind herself to do the right thing. She’s a good person.”

“Of course,” he said mock-indulgently. “You like her for her _personality_.”

“Cut it out, Ransom.”

“Come on. Don’t pretend you would still be hooking up with her if she wasn’t pretty.”

Meg balked. “I’m not hooking up with her,” she said.

He snorted. “Yeah, right. I promise I won’t tell my mother, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“There is nothing going on between me and Marta.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I can’t?”

“Then why are you there, Meg? If you’re not sleeping with her, and you—for some unknown reason—don’t want the money, why are you taking her side? She’s not one of us.”

“No, she’s not _like_ us. She’s actually a decent person, and my friend, and, Jesus, Ransom, I had to get away from the family. I mean, they’ve always been dysfunctional, but this was a whole new level.”

His face was stormy and his voice hard as he said, “They’re still family, Meg.”

“That’s what Marta’s been saying.”

“Really?” he asked, suddenly calm and easygoing again.

It felt like a victory, even though Meg was pretty sure there was no such thing as a victory when it came to Ransom. His outer demeanor didn’t actually mean anything. Ransom was all bite and no bark.

“Yeah. She said the same thing: “They’re your family.” As if that just…” Meg mimed an arc in the air as if wiping a slate clean. “It’s not even like I don’t love them. I just…”

“So are you doing Christmas?”

“Apparently. Your parents are hosting.”

“I heard. _That_ is going to be a shitshow.”

“I can’t believe they’re still together,” Meg said without really thinking.

“Please,” Ransom said, “all the shit flying around right now, you know how bad a divorce would look?”

“Right. Optics. I should’ve known.”

“There’s vodka in my closet, if you need it.”

His calm was seeping into her, softening her, despite her resolve. She focused on a scratch in the window between them until his face blurred out of focus and reminded herself not to get too comfortable.

“Why’d you do it, Ransom?”

His lip twitched; the only sign he was put off by the question.

“I mean, Grandad would’ve given you a loan. Why didn’t you try to…start a business or talk him out of it or something? Why—?”

“What can I say?” he said with a shrug.

That was it, Meg realized. He wasn’t hiding a deeper motive or trying to rile her up by being blasé about it. He’d done it because he thought it would work, and that was all there was to it. Nothing with Ransom went further than skin deep. It should’ve made Meg mad; in any other situation, it would have, but there was just painfully, poignantly no point. Spending an entire lifetime reserve of anger on Ransom wouldn’t change him or make her feel better.

“I’m surprised you came alone,” he said, evidently judging the previous topic exhausted. “I thought she might come to gloat.”

“Marta?” The idea was absurd. Marta was _terrified_ of Ransom. Meg almost mentioned his reoccurring role in her nightmares but stopped herself. If there was even a chance they’d ever be in the same room again—and they would, when it came time for the trial—that was not information Ransom should have. “She’s not really in a gloating mood.”

Ransom rolled his eyes. “How could she not be? She’s rich.”

“She didn’t want it, Ransom. She’d rather Grandad was still alive.”

“You really believe that don’t you?” he asked, tilting his head and studying her. “You’re really that enamored.”

“What? That has nothing to do with it. Anyone who’s paying attention can tell that Marta is a kind, unselfish person. Blanc figured it out in less than a day.”

“Sorry, Meg. You’re biased.”

Two booths down, another visitor-inmate pair said their goodbyes. Meg and Ransom were the only two left, besides the guards. In the lull, Meg noticed a faint, steady ringing, but she couldn’t tell if it was coming from the receiver or her own ear.

“Maybe I am biased,” she said eventually. “But I don’t believe it because I’m biased; I’m biased because I believe it. That goodness—it’s what I love about Marta. I believe in her because I believe in it, not the other way around.”

“Love?”

“You can love your friends.”

“Meg,” he said, and, for just a second, he was the rarest form of Ransom—the one that genuinely cared about his family. The one that Meg still wanted to believe was real, despite everything. “That’s not what you meant.”

He was right, and Meg was pretty sure she was only just realizing as much. It was probably messed up that he was the first person she was admitting it to, but she doubted denying it would do any good. He’d known all along, even if she hadn’t.

“It’s a moot point,” she said. “We’re just friends.”

“Meg. Under all that Lady Macbeth shit, you’re a Thrombey. If there’s anything you should know in your bones how to do, it’s get a girl to love you.”

Meg shrugged. “I’m telling you, it’s not like that. She doesn’t see me that way, and, anyway, I’ve taken enough of her goodwill. The last thing she needs right now is me making it weird. I did accidentally see her in lingerie, though, so that will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

Ransom barked out a surprised laugh. “No,” he said.

“What?”

“No girl has ever been seen in lingerie by accident.”

“Ever? Really, Ransom?”

“Ever. Especially not a girl like Marta Cabrera.”

* * *

“He’s right,” said Amelia over the phone while Meg drove back to the house. “And I can’t believe you’re putting me in a situation where I agree with your psychopath cousin.”

Meg had called Amelia, and only Amelia, because the last person she talked to before she saw Marta shouldn’t be Ransom. He brought out the Thrombey in her. She needed a palate cleanser.

Also, Amelia was the least likely to give Meg a hard time for any aspect of her conversation with her cousin. She understood what it was like to have a complicated family. Which was why she had steered the conversation to Ransom’s opinions on lingerie and not commented on the fact that Meg had probably been too open with him.

“He’s not right,” Meg said.

“We’re talking about a set, right? Not color coordination, but like a full on lingerie set?”

“Yeah.”

“No girl has ever put on a lingerie set because that was the first and second thing they fished out of their underwear drawer.”

“Yeah, sure, I guess.”

“It’s a deliberate choice, and when a girl makes that choice it’s one of three situations. One: there’s someone waiting for her on the other side of the door. Two: she’s preparing for a possibility, if a date goes well or she meets someone at the bar, whatever. Three: it’s just for her.”

“Okay, so it’s three, obviously,” said Meg. “She didn’t put it on intending to show it to anyone.”

“Maybe, but she knew she was wearing it when she made the decision to take her clothes off.”

“She was drunk. She wasn’t thinking straight.”

“Whatever. I’m just saying it’s extremely convenient that she was wearing sexy lingerie on a night she happened to get drunk and take her clothes off in front of you.”

Meg huffed. “No, see, she thinks of me so platonically that it didn’t even occur to her that it would be weird.”

“Oh my god, Meg. Stop being so obtuse.”

“It wasn’t on purpose. It wasn’t.”

* * *

Unbeknownst to Meg, while she was out, Marta had gone back to the boxes.

Back to the journals.

And she had found something.


	5. Tension

Meg knew the second she stepped through the front door that something was up. The air in the house felt cold and thin, like no one had been breathing in it. In fact, it almost seemed like the house itself had been holding its breath.

The Thrombey Estate was, undoubtedly, the home of an author, not only in its character and contents, but also in the way it bent to a scene. From the wood panelling that climbed the walls to the assorted sculptures, the house overflowed with elements that could, in one moment, feel warm or homely or whimsical and, in another, become eerie and foreboding. As the granddaughter of a bestselling author, Meg Thrombey knew how to read a scene. At that precise moment, the house was screaming at her that something big was about to happen.

And then there was the fact that Marta didn’t say hello.

She was there, in the foyer, expectant. The sun had already set on that short winter day, so she was lit by the sconces, mostly from behind. They gave her a warm, fire-bright glow around the edges and cast her contours into darkness. She was beautiful: at once inviting and inaccessible. Every single line of her—in her face and her posture and her bare feet—read _don’t fuck this up_.

She didn’t say hello. What she said was, “Is this true?”

In her hand was a spiral-bound notebook folded open to a particular page.

It took Meg a moment to recognize that notebook from the crispness of the pages and the evolution of her handwriting, but, when she did, she panicked. That notebook was not from middle school or even high school. It wasn’t from before she hit puberty or noticed girls. It wasn’t from before she met Marta. No, that notebook was from three summers ago, and Meg realized with inescapable dread how it had ended up in Marta’s hands.

The summer after her freshman year, the family had gathered at the house for the Fourth of July. Marta had been new, then—they’d only met once or twice before—and hadn’t known yet about the dangers of being guileless around Thrombeys. Meanwhile, Meg, at nineteen and with a year of higher education under her belt, had thought herself grown-up and worldly. She’d bought a special journal in which she was meant to write one line a day, as if she might look back years later and find her horny teenage self enlightening, but she’d forgot it at home, so she’d been writing her single daily snippets in a regular, lined notebook. Marta had knocked on Meg’s door to say hello, and Meg had tossed her notebook onto the shelf in the closet to hide it.

She’d had to hide it because she’d been writing about Marta.

At some point, it must’ve been swept into the boxes with her other notebooks.

“Is what true?” asked Meg, because, while it almost certainly was true, Meg couldn’t remember exactly what she’d written, so she wasn’t sure exactly what Marta had read. She couldn’t remember how damning it had been.

To her utter dismay, Marta looked down at the notebook and read aloud, her words carefully toneless, “Grandad has this nurse named Marta and I really want to kiss her.”

Shit.

“I, uh—can I see that?”

Marta’s face, uncharacteristically, gave nothing away as she handed over the notebook without a word. Meg looked down at what was, undeniably, her handwriting, then back up at Marta.

Make that almost nothing. Her eyes revealed just a hint of something. Impatience? Frustration?

 _Stall_ , Meg’s brain urged. _Stall and think of something and then deny, deny, deny._ “Um,” said Meg, scanning the offending excerpt and then turning the notebook over to examine the previous pages, as if it needed context.

As she loosened her grip to do so, the pages separated a bit and a greeting card slid out from somewhere in the middle. Meg picked it up and opened it. She sensed Marta’s exasperation, but the most convenient and defensible stalling mechanism had literally fallen at her feet, and she was not about to overlook it. Meg read the card.

_My dearest granddaughter,_

_Congratulations on completing your first year of college. You are bright and motivated and stubborn like your father. I have no doubt you will do great things by your own measure. Make sure at least some of them you do for yourself._

_Also, remember that a lone sword against an army makes for great drama, but some battles are best fought with company._

_\- Grandad_

She read it over again.

_Make sure at least some of them you do for yourself._

“Meg _,_ ” said Marta.

Tucking the card into her coat pocket, Meg slowly raised her gaze. The inaccessibility fell away and left only Marta. Barefoot, bright-souled Marta.

 _For yourself._

Since That Day—the day of the will reading—Meg had been paralyzed by the prospect of what selfishness and self-preservation wrought. Not only because of what she had done—what her family had pressured her into doing, but she had done nonetheless—but because of what she’d seen all too clearly in them. Selfishness and entitlement had clouded their judgement so irreparably that they’d turned into greedy monsters. If there was ever anything Meg could do for Marta, it would be to make sure she never had to experience that again. Selfishness was dangerous.

But. 

For the first time in over a month, Meg let herself be a little selfish.

“It’s true.”

Marta’s lips twitched upward, but she schooled her features and asked, “Still?”

“More now than when I wrote it.” 

“Thank god.”

What followed was the best kiss of Meg’s life thus far.

They kissed until Meg pressed Marta backwards one step too many and Marta’s heels caught on the base of the stairs, bringing them both down.

“Shit, sorry! Are you okay?” asked Meg, clambering off Marta and moving to sit beside her on the step.

“I’m fine,” said Marta, laughing. “I’m _more_ than fine, Meg.”

Meg couldn’t help but lean in and kiss her again. And again. And again, until Marta was laying back and Meg was hovering over her with both hands on the stair on either side of her head.

“Okay,” Marta said, after a few seconds, “ _this_ is uncomfortable.”

“You’re the one who had to have this conversation in the foyer. You didn’t even let me take off my coat.”

“Meg, I don’t know what they’ve been teaching you at college, but this—” she waved her hand between them “—is not a conversation.”

“Marta, it’s stupid and I don’t know why we’re having it when we could be making out, but this is literally a conversation.”

Marta laughed.

Semantics settled, Meg sat up, wriggled out of her coat and cardigan, and pulled Marta onto her lap. As much as Marta had a point about the stairs not being all that comfortable—the lip of the next step was digging into Meg’s lower back enough to be just the wrong side of distracting—she was determined to savor the moment. This was the beginning. They’d have other firsts, Meg hoped, but they’d only have the one beginning, and she intended to stretch it broad and thin until she could see the world through it.

Marta tasted faintly like orange Fanta and iron, the former because of her soda habit and the latter because sometimes no amount of chapstick could prevent a split lip during a New England winter. Her lips were still soft, though, and running her tongue over the angry red line made Meg feel warm inside. It wasn’t that Marta was a _better_ kisser than anyone Meg had kissed before, but the experience was worlds apart simply because the hands on her cheeks and the warmth against her body and the weight in her lap were Marta.

And then Marta rolled her hips and said, “ _Meg_ ,” and they scrambled up the stairs hand in hand.

In the foyer, Marta had been golden.

In the bedroom, she was platinum.

Meg’s hands stole under the hem of her sweater, lifted the thick wool away, slid up moonlit ribs as she backed Marta onto the bed. Once she’d kicked off her boots and settled between Marta’s jean-clad knees, the kissing resumed. Meg couldn’t help it.

It was the same phenomenon she’d experienced downstairs, only exacerbated by seeing Marta with her head on the silvery silk pillow and the lights off so she was almost in greyscale, except her eyes. Maybe it was because Meg _knew_ , but even in the dark Marta’s eyes were a sunburst of bronze and green. Every time Meg pulled back with the intention of something more, she made eye contact with Marta and simply _had_ to kiss her again.

“Here,” said Marta when Meg impatiently pushed her hair out of her face for the third time in as many minutes. She tugged out her own hair tie and held it out.

“Thanks,” Meg said, sitting up and back on her heels and twisting her hair into a bun.

Marta smiled and brushed her thumb over Meg’s cheek. “I like this,” she said.

“What?”

“Being able to see your face.”

Meg blushed. From her new vantage point, she looked down at the woman beneath her. God, she was beautiful. Meg buried her face in Marta’s warm, smooth neck. She scraped her teeth over a fluttering pulse and thrilled when Marta’s breath hitched.

“Oh, god,” said Marta, holding Meg to her. “Keep doing that.”

“You’ll end up with a bruise,” Meg said against her throat. 

“Don’t care.”

“Okay, that’s so hot, but how about a raincheck for when Christmas isn’t, like, two days away? I don’t want your family to know me as the girl who gave you a massive hickey.”

Instead of waiting for a debate, Meg popped the button of Marta’s jeans and slid her hand inside, offering an alternative, eliciting a gasp. She nosed up the inviting line of Marta’s throat, kissed her jaw, and hovered an inch above her lips, all the while rubbing circles with her fingers. Quickly enough, the bite of the zipper against the back of Meg’s hand got to be too much, and she withdrew to get rid of Marta’s jeans entirely, discarding her own shirt as well.

“Cute,” she said, tracing the outline of one of the turtles on Marta’s patterned underwear and then sliding her fingers down to where the cotton was damp.

“My nice underwear is in the laundry.”

“Lucky I’ve seen it already,” Meg murmured, ghosting her lips over Marta’s ear, “or I’d be disappointed.”

“Yes,” Marta said sarcastically, her hips twitching, “that was _luck_.”

“Damnit.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m just an idiot, apparently.”

“Not—not an idiot,” said Marta breathily. “Just a little oblivious, maybe.”

Meg grinned. “I’ll try to be more attentive,” she promised and slid her left hand under Marta’s back to unclasp her bra, all the while still stroking between Marta’s legs with her right. “God, you’re gorgeous,” she said reverently as the bra was tossed aside.

Rather unsurprisingly, Marta wasn’t very vocal. Every sound she made started in her chest; she was all staccato exhales and clipped whimpers and swallowed moans. So it delighted Meg all the more when she whined, “Meg, _please_.”

And then the underwear was off and it was just skin and slick and it only took a few grasping twists of her fingers to make Marta curve tight and taut, her body singing like the string of a harp.

Marta’s stomach was soft and warm, and Meg folded her hands across it and rested her chin on them. “Can I ask you a question? You don’t have to answer.”

“What is it?” Marta asked, propping herself up on her elbows to smile dopily at Meg.

“What’s your dirtiest fantasy?”

Marta laughed self-consciously. “Up until recently, it would have been this, with you.”

“ _Me?_ Really?”

“Yes, really. You were so off-limits. I kept fantasizing about having sex with my boss’s granddaughter at my place of work, and I felt so guilty about it.”

Meg grinned, practically glowing with pride. “I wish I knew sooner.”

“I never would have said anything. I was so afraid Harlan would disapprove because, if he did, that would’ve been the end of it. If he never found out, then he could never say no, and, if he never said no, there’d always be a chance.”

“That kind of sucks.”

“Mhm. But you want to know what it is now? My fantasy?”

Meg nodded eagerly.

“I’m sitting at a table with maybe half a dozen people, all dressed nicely. Like a board meeting or something. For the first time, I’m not the help; I’m their equal. And you…you’re under the table…making me come, and they have no idea, and, and it’s like I have the world wrapped around my fingers.” Marta rolled her hips, and Meg realized how much the thought of this was turning her on. “I think I’d be too nervous to actually go through with it, but I wish I had that confidence.”

“Next time you’re in a business meeting, call me in and I’ll lose my pencil under your desk,” Meg offered cheekily. 

Marta flushed red. “What’s yours?” she asked.

Meg bit her lip. “I don’t know. I mean, I wish I had a strap-on right about now, but that’s not really a fantasy.”

“You didn’t have something specific in mind when you asked that question?”

“No, actually, but…” Meg racked her brain. “I did have this dream last winter. When we arrived for Christmas, I came in here to put my stuff down, and the door locked behind me and you were sitting on my bed in this sexy Mrs. Claus outfit with, like…garters,” Meg said, tracing Marta’s thigh where the imaginary garter had been. “And you told me I’d been a good girl and reached for the buttons of your dress. And then my alarm went off.”

Marta grinned widely. “I don’t have a dress, but I do have a Santa hat.”

“You’re more than welcome to take some initiative. So far, you’ve been a real princess,” said Meg with a grin and absolutely no real reproach.

Marta gasped, mock offended. “For that, I’m going to stay on my back and show you how much I can do from right here.”


	6. Conflict

“Go away,” Meg grumbled at the ringing doorbell.

A glance at the clock told her it was exactly 9AM. Too early. She tried to bury her face in Marta’s shoulder, but Marta was already pulling away. Meg caught her around the waist.

“Ignore it,” she said.

“It’s Blanc,” said Marta, wriggling out of her grasp. She whipped her t-shirt off as she rose from the bed and headed for the closet, and Meg stared longingly at her bare back. “And that would be rude. I did invite him.”

“You invited Blanc? For what, tea and donuts?”

“Come on. Up.”

Meg did sit up, but only in order to watch Marta step out of her pajama pants and into a pair of bubblegum pink briefs. Then forest green pants. White bra. Maroon sweater.

It was clear from how quickly she was getting dressed that the window was closing on shenanigans. Meg reluctantly got out of bed. She found her bra, and put it on under her sweatshirt. Her own clothes were still in her room, so the Smith sweatshirt and yoga pants she’d worn to bed would have to do.

When Marta sat down on the bed to put on her socks and shoes, Meg crawled up behind her and wrapped her arms around her waist. “Are you sure you want to spend the morning with Blanc?” she asked. She pressed her lips to that spot on Marta’s neck. Scraped lightly with her teeth.

Marta’s head fell back onto Meg’s shoulder. Her hands stilled on her shoelaces and she sighed. “Meg,” she protested, but the fight wasn’t there. She was caving. On the bedside table, her phone buzzed. Benoit Blanc.

“Shit,” Marta said. She leapt up; brought the phone to her ear. _Troublemaker_ , she mouthed at Meg. Aloud, she said, “Hello…Yes, sorry! Overslept. I’ll be right down.”

Rolling her eyes, Meg knelt down and caught Marta by the ankle before she could bolt. “Relax,” she said, reaching for her shoelaces. “I just don’t want you to break your neck.” She tied a careful knot.

Marta brushed her fingers fondly over Meg’s cheek. “Thank you. Put on shoes and meet me downstairs,” she said. And then she was gone.

“Good morning, Miss Thrombey,” Blanc said as Meg descended the stairs a minute later in her boots.

“Hey.”

“You may wonder why I’m not surprised by your—”

“My car’s in the driveway,” Meg said.

“Uh, yes,” he said, seeming disappointed. “Yes, that _is_ it.”

“What I don’t know is why you’re here. No offense.”

Blanc looked to Marta.

“This way,” she said, heading for the cellar.

Following obediently, Meg laughed in disbelief. “This is about the whisky?”

“I want to know what I should keep for myself and what I should be willing to give as gifts.”

“That’s…probably a good idea, actually.”

“I know.”

“What prompted this sudden interest in whisky drinking?” asked Blanc as they stepped into the cellar. “Aside from inheriting such a…Well, this is quite a marvelous supply.”

Wooden shelves ringed and cross-hatched the room. The walls were stocked with wine, but the middle of the cellar was all whisky. There were bare bottles, but just as many were still inside elegant boxes—rectangular, cylindrical, sculpted. And tall. They were all tall. 

Meg perked up. “She didn’t tell you?”

“What?” Blanc asked at the same time Marta said, “Meg…”

“That she tried to kill one of…” Meg scanned the shelves. “… _these_ all by herself the other night?”

“Macallan? Well, Miss Cabrera,” Blanc said with a chuckle, “you’ve got good taste.” He picked up one of the two unopened bottles. “Now, this is a scotch you save for _very_ special occasions. And very special company.”

A shy kind of satisfaction spread across Marta’s face, and she made eye contact with Meg. Meg smiled back at her, filled with a much more pleasant, fuzzy warmth than she’d gotten from the scotch.

“Now I feel bad I didn’t like it,” she said.

“We’ll find you something gentler, bebecita,” Marta teased.

Blanc, who was pretending to scan the inventory, snorted. He started pulling certain bottles forward on the shelves, out of their meticulous alignment.

“So you’re spending Christmas here, Miss Thrombey?” he fished.

“No, I’m leaving in…four hours. Supposed to be in Boston by three.”

“Ah. My condolences.”

*

Four hours went too fast.

The two hour drive wasn’t quite as painless, but Meg eventually found herself inside the Drysdale family home in West Newton Hill, just outside of Boston. It wasn’t as manorly as Grandad’s house, but it was big and extravagant. The exterior was Victorian, and the interior looked like a gallery had sex with a wine bar.

True to form, Linda greeted her at the door with a hug. She was wearing an emerald green pantsuit.

“How’d the semester turn out?” she asked.

“Besides finding out that my tuition hasn’t been paid for the spring?”

Linda raised an eyebrow and waited patiently.

“Fine,” Meg said grudgingly. “Straight As.”

“Good work, kiddo. You know, I don’t know how hard it is to find a full-time job in social justice whatever, but you know you can work for me temporarily if you don’t have something by graduation.”

It was all said so matter-of-factly, and Meg wasn’t surprised by the offer—Linda always asked about school, and nepotism was the Thrombeys’ bread and butter—but she’d spent so much time being mad at her family for how they’d treated Marta that she’d forgotten _they_ weren’t mad at _her_.

Of course, not everything was back to normal.

No one mentioned Grandad except in passing, tributary ways like, “Dad would’ve liked this,” as if he’d died of natural causes some time ago instead of suicide via attempted murder just last month. No one mentioned Ransom, either, which made sense but still felt strange because he was always part of the conversation at family gatherings, whether he was present or not.

Also weird was how Mom, Linda and Walt all kept looking at Meg as if they wanted to stick _her_ in the nutcracker to get at her brain.

Meanwhile, Richard’s presence definitely didn’t ease any tension. No matter how much they tried to pretend, Linda bristled every time he spoke, and he didn’t seem to know when to shut up.

Meg wondered if they’d already agreed to a divorce or if either of them still thought they might work it out. Personally, she found cheating reprehensible, but she felt just as strongly about racism and misogyny, and Linda had put up with those critical character flaws for thirty-something years. By the time Meg was born, they’d been together a decade, so Meg didn’t know what they’d been like when they first got together. Maybe they’d been sweet and loving and entirely different people then.

Then again, right from the start, Linda hadn’t trusted Richard enough to forego a prenup.

Their relationship had been picture perfect. Meg had _seen_ the pictures. They’d been the Homecoming Queen and the captain of the football team. Not at the same school—high school sweethearts was a cliche for poor country kids. They’d met right out of college, and they’d gotten married and produced an aesthetically perfect monster. And then the glitter had faded, and their little monster had grown and bared his fangs, and it was impossible to hide anymore. Their aesthetically perfect life was rotten on the inside.

So Richard mostly talked politics with Donna through the afternoon. It was an echo chamber if Meg had ever seen one. She observed them—the spouses—and wondered what would happen when Jacob inevitably bared his fangs.

Marriage was the furthest thing from Meg’s mind, but she couldn’t help but think about her own infant relationship. She wondered what Marta was doing and what her family’s Christmas traditions were. They’d spent the better part of ten days trading stories and learning new things about each other, but it didn’t feel like nearly enough.

Meg nearly jumped out of her skin when Jacob appeared at her shoulder by the fireplace and said, “Aunt Linda wants us to decorate the cookies. I’ll let you have the snowflakes.”

“You don’t want to harass them?”

“Meh. It’s Christmas.”

It was the least obnoxious he’d ever been.

When they finished the cookies, Joni cooed over them. “These are _so_ adorable. I need to post this on my insta story,” she said, whipping out her phone.

“Mom, they’re just cookies with a little frosting. And I’m 22 years old.”

Meg snuck Walt a cookie, because it was a tradition they’d come up with at some point. No one was explicitly forbidden from eating a cookie before dinner, and Meg doubted she’d had any particularly impressive smuggling skills as a kid, but it was a tradition nonetheless. She suspected it had something to do with her childhood interest in spies. Walt was terrible at gift-giving, but he’d been great at coming up with games.

Whatever Linda, Joni, and Walt wanted to ask Meg about, they held off the investigation until dinner.

“So, Meg,” Walt said, carefully casual as he sawed into his ham. “Where were you the last two weeks?”

They’d picked Uncle Walt, Meg guessed, because he was the least likely to piss her off. His kid was a Nazi, but that’d been Donna’s doing. Walt’s biggest flaw, besides the entitlement, had always been that he didn’t have a spine.

And maybe it had more to do with the fact that he’d been the fun bachelor uncle—the one who had time for games and who protected her from Ransom—for the first seven years of her life, but Meg had always liked Walt a little better.

But then he’d been the one to deliver her mistake to Marta’s door in the form of intimidation, so she was as unhappy with him as she was with the rest of them.

She was considering how to respond to his question without giving them what they wanted when Jacob said blandly, “She’s been with Marta.”

“How do you know that, you little troll?”

“It was on Twitter. “Harlan Thrombey’s granddaughter spotted Christmas shopping with the beneficiary of her grandfather’s will.” It was a Twitter moment.”

Meg’s eyebrows shot up. How had she not heard anything about that? She hadn’t had any idea she was recognizable or news-worthy.

“You’ve been hanging out with that thieving—”

“Shut up, Uncle Richard,” Meg said. She steeled herself and looked from her mom to Walt to Linda. “Is that how you three knew, too?” Because that had to be why Walt had brought it up.

Linda waved her hand dismissively. “Ransom—”

Meg’s blood ran cold.

“—mentioned that you and Marta are still “very friendly,” so Joni checked your Uber history.”

“You TRACKED ME? That is such a violation of privacy.”

“I wanted to know if you were safe. You weren’t on Instagram.”

“Safe? Why wouldn’t I be safe? The only dangerous people I’ve been around lately were the inmates when I visited Ransom in _prison_.”

Once again, Richard started to say something indignant, but he was cut off by Linda, who gave him the scariest look Meg had ever seen. Just the thought of a woman ever looking at her like that made her glad she didn’t have balls. If the divorce didn’t happen soon, Richard would be a eunuch.

“I’m perfectly safe with Marta,” Meg said.

“She’s not your friend anymore, honey,” said Joni. 

“Of course she is. Why wouldn’t we still be friends?”

Linda set down her fork and gave the conversation her full attention. “Because you are a Thrombey and she took what’s ours.”

“Okay, the entitlement is just…it was never “ours.” The money and the house and the books were Grandad’s. And she didn’t take anything; Grandad gave it to her. ”

“The right thing to do would be to give it back,” said Walt. “You said so yourself.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Meg felt itchy from the inside out. “Don’t bring that—you made me say that. You told me it was the only way I’d be able to finish school and that we’d take care of her and—no. This is what Grandad wanted.”

“Ignore Walt,” said Linda. “This isn’t about the money.”

“What? Then what’s it—oh. Optics, right?” Meg scoffed. “It looks bad for me to be friends with her. Or, what, it makes you look petty because I am and you’re not?”

“Sweetie,” Joni said, “you have to try to understand that—”

“ _I_ have to be understanding?”

“Marta has put this family in a difficult position. You have to stop spending time with her, at least for a while.”

“Oh my god, this is so backwards.”

“Can you just—just talk to her about the publishing company?” Walt persisted, evidently not entirely on the same page as Linda and Joni. “She could give it back, or I could run it for her…”

“I’m not doing that again,” Meg said. “I’m not letting you use me to get to her. And I’m not going to stop being her friend.”

“She’s probably only friends with you because she feels bad that her good fortune left you with nothing,” said Donna.

Everyone stared down the end of the table in surprise.

“What?” Donna said nervously. “I’m trying to help!”

“It’s not going to work,” Meg said. “You can’t change my mind.”

“Even though she was probably boinking Grandpa?”

“Shut up, creep.”

“The kid makes a point,” said Richard, and this time no one stopped him.

“Don’t you dare,” Meg seethed, her stomach turning. “Don’t you fucking _dare_. That’s not true and you know it.”

“It would make se—”

“Do you know how fucking gross and awful it is to hear that rumor about my grandfather and my—my friend? And you’re out here fucking perpetuating it?”

“You don’t _know_ it’s not true.”

“It’s not true.”

“Meg,” Joni said gently. She shrugged as if to say, _maybe…_

“It’s not true!” Meg insisted, feeling hysterical. “She’s—” Meg cut herself off.

“She’s what?” asked Walt, almost like he genuinely wanted something to exonerate Marta.

“She wasn’t hooking up with Grandad because he’s the wrong Thrombey.”

They all blinked, as if Marta having interests unrelated to Grandad hadn’t ever occurred to them. Of course it hadn’t; they’d never really made an effort to get to know her. To them, she was ancillary.

“It’s not me,” Walt said defensively, and Meg realized the mistake she’d made.

“I’m not saying anything happened,” she said, trying to fix it, hoping they would let it go. “The point is, it wasn’t Grandad she was interested in, so just stop saying that shit.”

This had been a bad move, Meg knew. It was only going to get her into trouble. She should change the subject to anything else. To politics or—

“Ransom?” guessed Joni skeptically.

“Yeah. He won her over by being charming and gallant,” Meg said sarcastically. No one seemed dissuaded. In fact, they seemed more convinced. _Don’t say it. Don’t say it, just let them think—_ “Jesus Christ, it’s not Ransom.”

“It’s you,” said Linda.

Meg bit the inside of her cheek so hard she tasted blood. “It doesn’t matter who—”

“It is,” Walt said, as if having an epiphany. “That’s why she looks at you like that.”

“Wait, what? Like wh—”

“Meg,” Joni jumped in, “if she’s holding the money over you, to get you to stay…”

“Is this about tuition, kiddo?” asked Linda, suddenly the good guy again, so much like Ransom. “Because we can find a way to cover that for you.”

“What?” Meg asked, bewildered by the turn the argument had taken. Did they think Marta was…what? “No. No, Marta’s not—she offered to pay my tuition. I turned her down. I’m not—the money’s not why…”

“Fine,” said Linda. “Stop seeing her.”

“Or what?”

“Or you’re not a Thrombey anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of hate this chapter. It was the hardest to write, and I don't feel like it's done, but I'm posting it because I'm trying to stick to a schedule. Maybe I'll revise it later. If you have any advice on how to fix it, please be my guest in the comments.


	7. Silence

“You’re threatening to disown me?”

“We hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Linda.

Meg looked around the table, but no one leapt to her defense. Not even her own mother. It hadn’t been a spur of the moment threat. She could tell.

“Honey, it’s an easy choice,” said Joni. “Choose us.”

“I think I’m done eating,” Meg said, standing up and turning slowly away—away from the Christmas ham, away from the table, away from her family—as if in a daze. Several voices called after her, including Joni, but she didn’t turn back or hesitate. Her eyes were welling up, and she wasn’t going to let them see her cry.

As she trudged up the creaky old stairs, she looked up at the evergreen tree outside the landing window. From a distance, nothing seemed wrong with it, but, as she climbed closer, she could see the holes. Some of the branches were dead. She didn’t know why they died—why most of the tree survived the harshness of winter but some branches didn’t. It made the tree look transparent in places, like someone had zigzagged across it with an eraser.

The staircase turned a corner at the landing, and, instead of the tree, before her was a dark hallway of closed doors. Ransom’s was the second on the left. Meg had brought her bag there earlier. She locked the door behind her.

There were enough guest bedrooms for her mother to sleep elsewhere, which was a relief, because she had no intention of opening the door. Or it would’ve been a relief, if she gave a damn about anyone else having feasible sleeping arrangements.

The blinds were open, white stripes against the night sky. Meg shuttered them. She sat down on the floor in the middle of the room, hugging her knees to her chest, and started to shake with sobs.

_It’s an easy choice._

Joni knocked on the door within minutes.

“Meg, sweetie, don’t you think you’re being a bit dramatic? Come back to dinner.”

Meg refused to acknowledge her. She had a hundred bitter rebukes lined up on her tongue, but the energy to deliver them had been sapped out of her. She said nothing.

With her wet nose pressed into her knee, Meg checked her phone. Marta had called just after five to check in and wish her a Merry Christmas, because of course she had. The LED clock in Ransom’s room read 5:45PM. Meg listened to the voicemail and smiled even as it made her cry harder, but she didn’t return the call. She didn’t know what to say.

_It’s an easy choice._

On the other side of the door, her mother walked away, back downstairs to the family she’d chosen twenty-five years ago. The family that had kept her afloat when her husband died; that treated her like a sister, not an in-law. The family— _Meg’s_ family—that was asking Meg to stop being friends with some girl they saw as a threat to their identity.

_It’s an easy choice._

They had no idea what they were asking her to choose between.

Marta was more than a friend. She made Meg a better person, and, more importantly, she made Meg happy. She was solace and honesty and selflessness.

The Thrombeys were not those things, but they were Meg’s family, and that was permanent. Even if that name sometimes felt less like a badge of pride and more like a gilded cage.

Meg had taken Marta’s side in the matter of Grandad’s will, and she hadn’t forgiven her family for their actions, nor would she make excuses for them, but that didn’t mean she was prepared to give them up. She didn’t _like_ them at the moment, but she loved them. Always. It couldn’t be helped.

Not everyone, she knew, was that close with their extended family, but hers had been a regular part of her life from the very beginning. They’d been the first people to love and support her and, as friends came and went, were the only people to never stop. They’d always been there for her, no matter what stupid, selfish, thoughtless things she’d done.

Growing up around them meant Meg knew her family better than anyone, and likewise they’d watched her become the person she was today. There were a lifetime of things that only her family could understand or relate to: traditions, shared quirks, experiences, and losses. They disagreed vigorously on some things, but they never expected her to be someone other than herself, and they’d always defended each other to outsiders.

Being a strong family didn’t make them good people by any means, and Meg didn’t know how to reconcile that.

Was there something wrong with her that she couldn’t even hate Ransom as much as she should’ve? 

Sitting in the dark on his bedroom floor, she wiped her nose on her tear-soaked sleeve and tried. She didn’t even have to think hard to come up with a list of evidentiary things he’d done ranging from unpleasant to unforgivable. But the photo on his dresser stared back at her and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t hate him.

The photo was from Walt’s wedding. The whole family was in it, including Meg’s dad. His smile was so, so wide. Meg could practically hear him saying, _My baby brother’s getting married!_ But, when she picked up the frame and looked closer, she could see the pain behind his eyes.

Meg didn’t remember her dad being sad much. When the diagnosis came, Joni had been bad at hiding her pain, but Neil had tried to keep it away from Meg, she’d been told later, so her memories of him would be happy and upbeat. It had worked, mostly, but the wedding…

Dad had been really sick by then. Terminal, probably, but that wasn’t a word the family had used around six year old Meg. His thick hair had fallen out, and he’d lost a lot of weight. There had been fights about that. Linda and Walt would get so upset when he didn’t eat, but he’d only smile and tell them he was fine.

He’d lost his strength with the weight. Before, when he’d been big and strong, he’d picked Meg up all the time for hugs and horseplay and piggyback rides. Once his skin started to feel like tissue paper, he hadn’t been able to do that anymore.

On the day of Walt and Donna’s wedding, the dizzy spells made him vomit twice before the ceremony. The guests were all seated, and the wedding processional had begun, but Dad was leaning heavily on a floral patterned chair, trying to find the strength to stand and walk straight. Donna’s maid of honor was a wisp of a woman, and she’d never have been able to support that much of his weight. Walt had already gone inside. It was time for them to go, but Dad couldn’t, and he’d looked at Meg, and she’d seen the sadness.

Meg, with her little flower crown and basket, had been scared.

Then Ransom, who’d only minutes before been off somewhere complaining about not being allowed champagne, had appeared in the hallway. At seventeen, he’d been tall—almost as tall as Dad and Walt—and muscled, if not as broad as he’d eventually become. He’d put his arm around Dad as if nothing was wrong and said, “I know you’re the best man, Uncle Neil, but share a little of the spotlight, will you?”

Ransom had supported him the whole way to the altar, slow and steady, walking three across with the maid of honor on the other side. 

And then he’d come back for Meg.

She’d still been so scared. “Your dad’s gonna be fine, Megatronic,” he’d said as he picked her up and carried her horizontal down the aisle like she was flying.

That same night, he’d brought a girl to the honeymoon suite and trashed it.

Ransom did and said what he wanted to. Always had.

Meg would never, ever forgive him for what he’d done to Marta or Grandad or Fran. That heavy seed of sadness that had stopped her from shouting at him the other day, the one that took root more firmly every time she thought about him, would probably never go away. But, god help her, she’d never truly hate him, either.

In the dark, Meg set the picture frame down on the floor beside her and shifted until she could lean back against the foot of the bed. Pressing her forehead to her damp knees, she closed her eyes and wondered if being able to hate her family would make her feel better.

She must have fallen asleep like that, because she woke up stiff and uncomfortable at 11:57PM.

Almost seven hours had passed since Marta had called, so Meg took several deep breaths, fortified herself, and called her back.

“Meg!” said Marta brightly. “Merry Christmas!”

Meg could picture her, red-cheeked in front of the fire with a glass of whisky in her free hand. She closed her eyes again and imagined she had ruby slippers or a time machine or a family that didn’t make things so fucking complicated.

“Hi,” she said solemnly when none of those wishes came true.

“Hey, is everything alright?”

“Not really.”

Marta’s voice got really quiet and small. “Meg. What happened?”

“They threatened to disown me.”

“What?” said Marta so loudly that it startled Meg. “They did what?”

The tears welled back up and Meg closed her eyes and clenched her fist, digging blunt fingernails into her palm. It didn’t stop the tears from leaking out, but she tried to keep her voice steady. “They said I needed to cut you out of my life,” she said. Marta made a little noise of distress and Meg swallowed. “I said no, so they gave me an ultimatum.”

“I—I can’t believe this. I can’t _believe_ they would do that to you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no, no, Meg. Don’t be sorry. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I do. I’m sorry I can’t…I can’t. I love you, but I can’t. I’m sorry.”

“Wait, what?”

“I’m sorry,” Meg said again, and she hung up.

She set her phone on the floor and went to Ransom’s closet. The handle of vodka was in the back corner next to a pair of dress shoes, nearly half empty. Meg didn’t bother looking for a glass. Ransom wouldn’t be back for anything in that house in a very long time. Maybe ever. Across the room, her phone buzzed steadily as she pulled away the next inch of liquid in the handle.

The thing about being kind of in love with her grandfather’s nurse for the last three years was that Meg had dated, but she’d never really been in a relationship. She’d never been able to commit to anyone enough to get her heart broken before.

It felt pretty fucking shitty.

And worse, probably, because the hand around her heart, crushing it, was her own. She’d done this to herself.

There was a numbness in her that didn’t come from the alcohol. It coated her heart so all she felt was a distant sense of despair. Meg wasn’t sure if she was trying to deepen the numbness or burn it out.

She wanted to be with Marta. She wanted it as much as she wanted to change the world and a thousand times more than she’d ever wanted Grandad’s money.

Of all the injustices throughout human history, the fact that being a Thrombey was responsible for both the genesis and demise of her relationship with Marta felt like it should rank among the greatest.

It physically hurt. And every time she thought she’d pulled herself together, the tears bubbled back up unprompted. Not because of the crushing pain or a particular sad thought or anything, just…tears. It made no sense that she could feel so numb and be in so much pain at the same time. Like her body was going through it but her brain had lost the ability to process her emotions.

Eventually, Meg put the vodka back and crawled on top of the bed. She didn’t bother to move her duffel or coat, or take off her shoes, or change into pajamas, or even get under the covers. She just curled up into a ball on her side and started crying again until she fell asleep.

* * *

She woke to the sounds of the rest of the house coming to life on Christmas morning. At least three people knocked on the door, but she didn’t come out for breakfast, even though her stomach felt hollow from not finishing dinner.

Tired, hungry, and emotionally exhausted, she fell back asleep for an hour or so. Or at least she thought she did. In her daze, there wasn’t much difference between sleep and wakefulness. All she knew was that, the next time she looked at the clock, an hour had passed.

At some point, she’d burrowed into her coat, and she noticed the blunted edge of a stiff square pressing into her forearm. She fished around for the source and pulled Grandad’s card from her pocket, then froze at the sound of footsteps in the hall.

“If you’re on a hunger strike, text me so I can finish your bacon,” said Jacob outside her door. There was an immediately recognizable click of porcelain against wood, and Meg’s stomach growled.

She waited until he walked away to crack open the door. On the floor in front of her was a plate of French toast and eggs and bacon. She opened the door wider to pick it up and saw Jacob at the end of the hall. They stared at each other for a long moment, and then he turned and descended the stairs without a word.

Taking a seat at Ransom’s desk, Meg wolfed down the breakfast, barely tasting it. It didn’t do anything for the crushing pain in her chest, but it did make her feel a little less hollow. She wondered if Jacob had brought her the food of his own volition or if one of the adults had put him up to it.

The card from Grandad was still on the bed, and it drew Meg’s attention once again. She picked it up and re-read it for the first time, pacing in a wide circle around the room.

_My dearest granddaughter,_

_Congratulations on completing your first year of college. You are bright and motivated and stubborn like your father. I have no doubt you will do great things by your own measure. Make sure at least some of them you do for yourself._

_Also, remember that a lone sword against an army makes for great drama, but some battles are best fought with company._

_\- Grandad_

Meg thought about everything she knew about her family and about what Grandad had wanted for them in the letter that accompanied his will, and the one thing that hadn’t made sense from the night before clicked into place.

She called Marta.

“Meg?” Marta answered, as if she fully expected it to be someone else.

“Hi.”

There was a huge sigh of relief and then, muttered, “This family, I swear to god.”

“Sorry,” Meg said sheepishly.

“Are you okay?”

“Not really. Better than last night, at least.”

“Meg, what’s going on?”

Meg stopped pacing and opened the blinds. Outside, it was raining. “What do you want?” she asked.

“What?”

“With all this. Us. What do you want?”

For several seconds, Marta was completely silent. “I don’t want you to lose your family,” she said finally, gingerly.

“I know,” Meg said, falling back onto the bed. “Because you’re wonderful and generous, but that’s not what I’m asking. I need to know what you want. If this was all up to you and no one else’s feelings mattered, what would you choose?”

“I want you.”

Meg grinned up at the ceiling. “They’re not going to disown me,” she said.

“What?”

“I mean, they said they would, and it did scare me, which is what they wanted, but they won’t do it. They’ll huff and puff and be generally awful for…I don’t know; it could be a while. But they won’t kick me out of the family. We’re Thrombeys. It’s not our style.”

“What does that mean?” Marta asked hesitantly.

“It means I’m calling their bluff. I want to be with you, but only if you’re willing to put up with my family. I don’t want to drag you back into this if it’s not…you know…what you want.”

The way Marta said her name then was filled with so much fondness and warmth and exasperation. “I’ve been putting up with your family for years.”

* * *

Said family was lounging in the living room around the Christmas tree when Meg came downstairs with her coat on and her duffel over her shoulder. Everyone looked up at her expectantly.

“Sweetie. Hi,” said Joni, rising from the couch. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the house,” said Meg flippantly.

“Back? But—”

“Yeah, this has been a blast, but…I’ve always wanted to say this—I’ve got to see about a girl. Text me about New Years?”

“Um…sure,” said Walt. 

Meg took three steps towards the foyer, then doubled back and pulled a bottle of scotch out of her bag. “This is for you,” she said, handing it to Walt. “She said to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Oh, and eat a dick, Uncle Richard.”

Jacob snorted hot chocolate out his nose.

With that, Meg turned on her heel. As she pulled the door closed behind her, she heard Walt say sarcastically, “Good job, Linda. That worked.”


	8. Commencement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to admit, this is the only chapter for which I had nothing planned. I wrote something, hated it, and then wrote this, which is…fine? 
> 
> There are mature shenanigans within that are not strictly necessary to the plot. If that’s not your thing, you can just skip this chapter and call 7 the end, a la Good Will Hunting.

Stretching up on her tiptoes, Meg scanned the crowd in the quad. She squinted through the glare of the warm spring sun, too hot in her graduation gown but too excited to take it off. The lawn was awash with bright colors and florals and pastels, pocked with graduates in black.

She pulled out her phone and texted the one person she was sure would be on theirs.

_Where are you?_

A slim hand immediately shot up in the front right section. Jacob looked jumpy, and it wasn’t hard to guess why. Smith College was not his scene. Meg grinned and picked her way through the throngs towards her family.

Everyone was there but Ransom, of course, and Richard. Meg wasn’t sure if whatever public scrutiny they’d been waiting for had blown over or if Linda had run out of patience, but, either way, the divorce had been finalized in late March. From what she’d heard, Richard had not been taking it well. Linda on the other hand, had become much more focused on her extended family. She’d gotten way closer with Joni, and she’d started calling Meg at least once a week.

Unfortunately for Meg, one common topic of conversation was unsolicited, embittered relationship advice. Strangely enough, it rarely had anything to do with the gender or identity of Meg’s significant other. In fact, it seemed like all the adults in her life were trying so hard to be cool about her sexuality that Marta herself had become a non-issue.

Just recently, Linda had said something about age gaps and not letting an older “lover” control her, and Meg had scoffed, and Linda had said, “I know. Marta wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Which had been frustrating, because it meant she’d known all along that Marta didn’t deserve any blame for what had happened with Grandad, but it was also a relief, because it meant the anger at the will reading and the lingering bitterness after hadn’t really been about Marta. At the end of the day, Meg did want her family to get along with her girlfriend.

So all the important people in Meg’s life were at her commencement, and it would be the first time since Ransom’s arrest that they were all together. Meg looked at Marta standing awkwardly amongst the Thrombeys and wondered if that had been a good idea.

She didn’t hear exactly what Linda asked, but, as she got closer, Meg could see the cornered look on Marta’s face that meant she was trying to escape a difficult question without tripping over her gag reflex.

“Aunt Linda, I’d appreciate it if you could at least not actively try to make my girlfriend vomit.”

They all turned towards her, and Marta’s face lit up like Meg had brought her the first warm day after a long, cold winter. Meg knew the feeling. They’d been able to steal time here and there throughout the semester, but finals and packing and graduation programming had kept Meg busy, and it’d been almost two weeks since they last saw each other in person.

“I want to know her intentions,” said Linda.

Meg rolled her eyes, hugging her aunt nonetheless. “With what?”

“You.”

“Jesus, Aunt Linda. That’s not a conversation for today.”

“Right,” said Joni, reaching for her daughter and crushingthe bouquet in her hands as she hugged her. “Today is about my college graduate! You were, like, totally brilliant.”

“I said like five sentences and walked across the stage without tripping,” Meg said dismissively.

“Ugh, you were so great.”

“You were,” Marta agreed, and Meg pulled away from her mother. “You spoke very well.”

“Thanks,” Meg said. She wrapped her arms around Marta’s waist, and Marta draped hers over Meg’s shoulders. “You look really pretty.” Aware of the eyes on them, she leaned in and kissed Marta chastely.

“Homos,” Jacob said reflexively.

“Fascist” Meg volleyed back lazily.

A nearby graduate who Meg recognized as a rugby player was not so unperturbed. She was comically taller and broader than Meg’s skinny little cousin, and she narrowed her eyes at him like she was evaluating how best to disembowel him. The panic on Jacob’s face was extremely satisfying.

“Your son is going to get himself shanked, Uncle Walt.”

Jacob glared at her, and Walt shrugged helplessly.

“Alright, let’s go to my dorm,” Meg relented. “But we need to come back in like three hours for the Jandon Center reception.”

As they walked, Meg took Marta’s hand and said, “You really didn’t have to sit with them.”

“I know. But Joni texted me, and…” She shrugged. “Broad daylight, lots of witnesses, not much opportunity for conversation…It wasn’t so bad.”

* * *

“That’s it,” Meg said, plopping down beside Marta on the couch in her bare dorm suite, relieved.

With everyone’s help, she’d packed all of her belongings into her car. Or rather, everyone _else_ had helped while Linda and Donna had “coordinated.” Her family was still out in the parking lot where she’d left them, arguing about something one of the commencement speakers had said. The important thing was, Meg would be able to drive straight from dinner that night to her new place.

“Are you still sure you want to live together?” she asked Marta jokingly.

“What would you do if I said no?”

“I guess…I’d have to persuade you?”

“Do your best, bebecita.”

Meg grabbed Marta’s face and kissed her the way she’d wanted to earlier. A hit of pure bliss flowed through her. In that moment, she silently vowed that they would never go that long without a proper kiss ever again.

“Wait,” Marta said, pulling away and placing one of two bags she’d retrieved from the car on Meg’s lap. “Open this before—”

The apartment door swung open and in came Meg’s family.

“Present time,” said Linda matter-of-factly.

They all had boxes or bags in their hands, and they settled into the assorted seating around Meg’s little suite and looked at her expectantly.

Marta stiffened.

Meg looked down into the bag on her lap and realized why. There were two boxes stacked inside, nestled in tissue paper, one considerably smaller than the other. The small one was a plain, sleek, black box, but she could see that the larger one was something she’d mentioned wanting way back in December.

Oh. Definitely not family-friendly.

Setting the bag onto the floor between her feet, Meg pulled out only the small box. She immediately recognized the logo on the corner and her eyebrows shot up.

“You didn’t,” she said to Marta.

“Open it.”

Meg popped open the box to find the one luxury item she’d always coveted—a Le Petit Prince Mont Blanc pen. She beamed and hugged Marta tightly. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“That’s all in that big bag?” asked Joni doubtfully.

“Yep,” Meg said lightly. Pressed so close together, she could feel Marta’s knee bouncing nervously. Joni was clearly not convinced, so she said, “Or it’s something I don’t want to open in front of my mother. You choose.”

“Well, it’s the perfect segue to our gift,” said Walt quickly, holding out a wide, flat box.

Inside was a beautiful leather portfolio. Then Linda gave her a Tumi backpack in the exact same shade of dark green. They must have coordinated. Meg wondered how much her new accessories would stick out at her non-profit job.

Jacob gave her something, too, and Meg was surprised for half a second, until she unwrapped it. The mug read _feelings > facts_, and Meg had to laugh at the absurdity.

Joni gave her an all-inclusive trip for two to the Bahamas that had to be one of those influencer getaways. Even if she did have an actual job in marketing now, there was no way she’d paid for that herself. Still, a vacation would be nice. Later, Meg would have to think of a smooth way to find out if she was supposed to invite her mother or her girlfriend.

“We have thirty minutes until your reception thing,” Linda said to Meg, looking at her watch. “And then I suppose we’re having dinner? Please tell me we’re not eating on campus.”

“Marta made a reservation, but she won’t tell me where.”

“It’s a surprise,” Marta insisted.

“Cute,” said Linda almost genuinely. “But you’re going to have to tell us so we can drive there.”

Meg rolled her eyes and covered her ears.

Whatever Marta said made Linda nod approvingly. “Good choice, kiddo,” she said. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

“No,” said Marta, looking down at her blouse and khakis and picking up the other bag she’d brought in from the car. She turned to Meg. “Can I use your bedroom?”

“Always. Do I need to change, too?” Meg asked hopefully.

“No, no. Wear your cap and gown.”

While Marta changed, Meg neatly packed her folio, mug, and the bag of gifts from Marta into her new backpack and filled her family in on what she’d been up to during senior week. Then they discussed their favorite parts of the commencement address, though Donna was reluctant and Jacob outright refused to admit to agreeing with anything Nancy Pelosi had said.

Just as the conversation started to get too political, Marta emerged, and everyone shut up.

In a rare departure from her usual style, she was wearing an elegantly simple black dress that hit mid-thigh and strappy heels. Her hair was loose and she had on smokey eyeshadow and baby pink lip gloss and looked so perfect that Meg could only think about mussing it all up.

“Wow,” Meg said, standing. “Um. Wow.”

“You look amazing,” said Joni.

Meg nodded mutely in agreement.

The second they got into Meg’s car, she studied Marta hungrily and said, “We can just skip all this stuff and go home.”

“No,” Marta said, starting the car. “You’re going to make an appearance at this party, and then we’re going to dinner with your family. I’m actually looking forward to it.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And _then_ we’re going to go home and you can play with your new toy.”

“God, you’re such a tease.”

“Ha. Me?” Marta asked, glancing down at Meg’s hand on her thigh then back up at the road. “ _I’m_ the tease?”

Subconsciously, Meg’s fingers had found their way to the hem of Marta’s dress and were tracing curves and swirls into the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. With how short the dress was, she’d barely have to move her fingers to get where she really wanted to be…

“You haven’t told me to stop,” she said.

“We’re here.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“I know.”

With the car safely in park, Marta let her knees fall apart in invitation. As Meg ventured higher and slipped her hand under the hem of Marta’s dress, she looked around furtively and noticed her mother walking towards the car.

“Shit.”

Meg pulled away, scrambled out of the car and ran around it to open the door for Marta.

“You’re terrible,” Marta said, smoothing down her dress.

“Sorry,” Meg whispered back. 

“You’ll make it up to me later.”

Joined by Meg’s family, they made their way into the reception for her major. Milling about the atrium were the peers Meg had spent the last eight semesters learning, studying, and complaining with and the professors that had made some of those semesters amazing or boring or hellish.

“I need to find my friends to take one picture, and then we can basically go.”

“I think they found you,” said Marta, pointing.

Sure enough, there were Grace, Amelia, and Hayley.

“Are we finally meeting the famous Marta Cabrera?” asked Hayley, eyeing the arm Marta had around Meg.

“Famous?” Marta echoed. “Does she talk about me?”

“Only all the time.”

“Since sophomore year.”

“We can’t believe it took you two this long.”

“Shut up,” Meg said, blushing. She introduced her friends before they could say anything too embarrassing. “You can all make fun of me another time,” she said. “Let’s get a picture, and then we’ve got to say some quick hellos and get out of here.”

One picture turned into a photoshoot when Joni got involved, but eventually Meg broke away, taking Marta with her. She could hang out with her closest friends another time—all three were staying in Massachusetts—but she wasn’t sure if or when she’d next see the rest of her class or her professors, so she had to at least say goodbye before she left.

As Meg made her rounds and exchanged pleasantries, there was something incredibly heady about the way Marta hung on her like she was a groupie and Meg was a rockstar. Meg guided her around the reception with a hand on her back that gradually slipped suggestively to her lower back and then shamelessly to the curve of her ass and got not even a hint of the protestation she would’ve expected from Marta.

Even though she really did care about the people she was talking to and what they would be doing with their life after that weekend, Meg couldn’t stop thinking about how wet Marta’s underwear had been in the car. When they finally finished talking to the last acquaintance on her list, she glanced around to make sure no one was paying attention and tugged Marta out of the atrium and around the corner into a dark hallway.

“We have seven minutes,” Marta objected even as she pulled Meg to her.

“I can work with that,” said Meg, kissing her fiercely.

Pressed back against the wall, Marta hitched her knee over Meg’s hip and tugged her even closer by the lapels of her open graduation gown. Meg slid her hand between them and pressed her fingers to damp silk.

“I can’t believe I’m encouraging this,” Marta whispered, though the hint of a whine in her tone gave away how little restraint she had left.

“Neither can I.”

“It’s so— _oh_ —so juvenile.”

“Pretty sure nothing about this is suitable for children, actually.”

“Oh, god, Meg. I’m so clo—”

The sound of heels echoed down the hallway.

“No,” Marta said despairingly under her breath. “No. Why?”

Meg tried to subtly straighten them both out and look as much like someone who hadn’t just had her hand up her girlfriend’s dress as possible. Thank god her gown hid pretty much everything from view. Hopefully, it just looked like they’d been making out. She moved her hands to Marta’s hips and looked down the hall to see her one of her former professors approaching.

“Heeyyy, Professor Hynes.”

“Meg,” the woman said, somewhere between jokingly and genuinely scandalized. “And who’s this?”

Resignedly, Meg let one hand fall and slid the other to the small of Marta’s back, turning out so they both politely faced the professor. “Um, this is my girlfriend, Marta.”

There was a spark of recognition in the professor’s eyes at the name, but she didn’t say anything.

“Babe, this is Professor Hynes. I took her Intro to Women and Gender Studies class freshman year.”

Despite the pent-up energy humming under her skin, Marta managed to paste on a congenial smile. “Tell me,” she asked, “was this one as headstrong in the classroom as she is everywhere else?”

“Meg was a good student,” Professor Hynes said with a chuckle. “She’s very passionate…and maybe a little stubborn. Those are good traits to have if one wants to effect change.”

“Sounds like Meg.”

“Well, it was nice to meet you, but you ladies should get back to the party.” 

“We will,” Meg promised. “Have a nice night.”

“Good night. And congratulations, Meg.”

“We have to go,” said Marta as Professor Hynes walked away. “Now, or we’ll be late for our reservation.”

She was right, unfortunately. Meg quickly gathered her family from the atrium and ushered them out. Then she had to make a pitstop to drop off her room key. That was it. She was moving out of the Smith dorms for the last time. When she got back to the car, she looked at Marta trying not to squirm in her seat and said, “If I drive…”

“You don’t know where we’re going.”

“At _your_ insistence,” Meg said, buckling her seatbelt.

Marta shook her head as she pulled out of the parking lot. “If you weren’t the light of my life, you’d be the bane of my existence.”

Meg winced. “Sorry. I really didn’t think anyone would be coming down that hallway.”

“No, no, it’s…I didn’t put on the shortest dress I’ve ever owned because I wanted you to _behave_.”

“You planned this?”

“Not exactly. I wanted a reaction. I just didn’t think it’d go as far as dry humping at your school.”

Meg snorted. “Dry humping makes it sound like some weird hetero shit.”

“It’s still—can we talk about something else?” Marta asked.

So they spent the next fifteen minutes chatting about nothing of consequence, until Marta parked in front of Smith & Wollensky. Walt was walking up the sidewalk towards the door, and Meg could see the rest of her family waiting inside.

Smith & Wollensky was one of the nicest restaurants in a twenty mile radius, and Meg had eaten there exactly once before, with her grandfather, for her twenty first birthday. That had been the best meal she could remember having. She didn’t think she’d ever mentioned it to Marta, though. She looked at her girlfriend as they got out of the car. “How’d you know?”

“Harlan said you liked it.”

“And you remembered?”

“Remembering things is the most important part of a relationship,” said Walt as he held the door open for them.

“The _most_ important?” Meg asked.

“Okay, maybe not the most important, but the…an…you know. It’s important.”

Meg laughed. “Thanks for the advice, Uncle Walt.”

They were seated at a round table in an alcove corner. Linda and Joni were in the midst of an ongoing debate about the merits of veganism, even though precisely none of them were vegan, and Meg made sure to reassure the hostess of that fact to ease the poor girl’s obvious concern.

The conversation was harmless, and the cocktails were good and the starters better, and Meg let the ease of it wash over her. She’d expected to spend the entire day keeping the peace, but she really hadn’t needed to. Eventually, inevitably, though, the topic arrived with the entrees.

“So, Marta,” Walt asked, “is your family living in the house, too, or…?”

Marta frowned in confusion. “No,” she said. “They still live in the apartment.”

Linda arched an eyebrow. “Oh? Haven’t found the right place yet?”

“Um, no? I’m not—I paid off the apartment, but I’m not buying them a house.”

That took everyone but Meg by surprise. Meg, for her part, realized Marta could totally handle that line of questioning and happily dug into her meal.

“Really?” drawled Linda.

“When, um, when the news came out about the will…” Marta’s knee started to bounce nervously, so Meg scooted her chair closer and patted Marta’s leg reassuringly. “My sister asked, “Are we rich?” _We_. And I saw what Harlan had been so…so worried about last year.”

“And what was that?” asked Walt.

“That he’d made you all dependent on him. I wasn’t making a lot of money before, but I supported my family. I paid for the apartment and the groceries and internet and healthcare.

“Then suddenly I had money and my sister assumed…My mom, she raised us, gave us better opportunities than she had. The least I can do is take care of her, now. But my sister—she’s still young. I want her to have ambition and do something fulfilling with her life. If she wants to go to school or something, I’ll help her, but—I want her to be able to support herself if this all goes away. Women dependent on breadwinners for survival…that’s not the life I want for her.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing with Meg?” asked Donna.

“Hey!” Meg yelped, almost dropping her vodka tonic.

Donna shrugged unapologetically.

“No, Meg doesn’t need me,” Marta said.

“Yes, I do.”

Marta tried to frown at her, but it came out too much like a smile. “You don’t need me _financially_.” She looked at Donna, unwavering. “Meg found a job, and she could’ve found an apartment if she needed to. She has plenty of ambition. And, most importantly, she’s never asked for money. Not from Harlan and not from me. She doesn’t expect to be supported. Which is why I’m not worried about her becoming reliant.”

“Congratulations, kiddo,” said Linda. “You’ve become a capitalist.”

“Too bad you’re dating a socialist,” said Jacob.

“I’m not a socialist,” Meg insisted. “I just think universal healthcare is not a huge ask.”

“Whatever.”

“So what are you doing with the money, then?” asked Walt, gesturing ambiguously with his fork.

“Philanthropy,” said Marta. She paused to take a bite of her salmon, then added, “I’m setting up a foundation.”

“Of course you are.”

Marta smiled sheepishly. “It’s not _completely_ altruistic. I kind of like running things.”

With her wine glass halfway to her lips, Linda could not have looked more pleased.

Meg, meanwhile, had an epiphany. Sitting at that table were people who used to think of Marta as the help and were maybe finally beginning to respect her. It was a round table, fitted snugly into a corner, and Meg and Marta were sitting in that corner, the whole rest of the dining room spread out in front of them. There were no tables behind or on either side. No one would see if she fulfilled the fantasy Marta had described back in December. 

And, anyway, she had finished her food while everyone else was talking. Idle hands and all that. Meg placed hers just above Marta’s knee. Then, because Marta had absolutely no poker face, she said the most absurd thing she could think of right before sliding her hand up Marta’s thigh.

“Thank god Richard isn’t here.”

No one noticed Marta’s eyes widening; they weren’t looking at her. They weren’t even looking at Meg. They’d all held their breath and turned to Linda, except, of course, Linda, who was staring right back at Meg.

Under the table, Marta laid her hand over Meg’s, hesitant but not resistant. She spread her legs slightly, causing her already short dress to ride up even more.

“No offense, Aunt Linda,” said Meg, “but he kind of sucked.”

Linda chuckled. “Oh, you made your opinion clear at Christmas.”

“Really?” asked Marta, carefully nonchalant as she adjusted her napkin over her lap to cover how indecently high the hem of her dress had crept. Not that there would be much room for denial about what Meg was doing with her hand under there if anyone actually saw. “But Meg’s usually so good at keeping her opinions to herself.”

“Rude,” Meg said.

“Eat a dick, Uncle Richard,” quoted Jacob.

“Wait, I thought…” Walt frowned. “That wasn’t part of the message from Marta?”

Marta gasped indignantly, which was the perfect entrée for Meg to press two fingers firmly against her silk-covered crotch. “It was _not_ ,” Marta squeaked.

“Well, he would’ve deserved it from you,” said Walt.

Jesus, Marta’s underwear was still genuinely soaked.

Linda threw up her hands. “You couldn’t have told me sooner that he was a bastard?”

“Didn’t know he was a cheater, just an asshole, and he didn’t try to hide that,” Meg said.

She could feel Marta’s pulse against her fingertips.

“He wasn’t _that_ bad,” said Linda.

“He talks shit about family. To strangers.”

“Okay,” Joni said, always quick to the defense, talking with her hands as if she could literally brush away the indiscretions. “Some people need to talk through their emotions with a third party.”

Meg could just faintly hear the way Marta’s breathing shallowed out and became irregular, and she knew she’d honed in on the right spot.

“No,” Linda said. “Meg is right. We don’t talk about family.”

“I mean, I’ve complained to my _closest friends_ about having a crazy family,” said Meg. “I definitely _don’t_ talk about private family matters to randos.”

Marta’s thigh muscles clenched and she grabbed Meg’s forearm. If they were alone, Meg would’ve taken that as a sign to slow down and delay the inevitable. In public in the middle of dinner, though, she flicked her fingers faster.

“Richard was just a jock jerk,” said Walt. “He was always rude to Dad’s staff. Right, Marta?”

“Um…yes?” Marta agreed distractedly. She was struggling to sit still, her hips rocking ever so slightly.

“It’s no wonder where—”

“Okay,” Meg said. She could guess where Walt was headed, and she didn’t think Linda would be nearly as okay with talking shit about Ransom. “We’re all in agreement now. No one likes Richard. Cheers to, like, new beginnings.”

Then Marta shuddered and caught Meg’s hand, holding it still against her as she came.

“Marta, are you alright, sweetie?” Joni asked.

“Yes,” Marta said, her voice thin. “I’m fine.”

“Are you cold?” Meg asked as the waitress arrived to clear the plates. She slipped off her graduation gown and placed it over Marta’s shoulders to complete the fib her girlfriend couldn’t tell. And to give her cover to fix her dress.

“No, you should be wearing this,” Marta objected halfheartedly.

“I’ve got the cap,” said Meg. “And, contrary to popular belief, feminists aren’t trying to kill chivalry.”

“Not chivalry, just all men,” said Jacob.

“Right,” Meg said, not letting him tick her off. “No men.”

Then, out of nowhere, one of the servers set a huge piece of chocolate cake on the table. Around the edge of the plate, it said _Congratulations Meg!_ in raspberry coulis. “Meg, I assume?” asked the boy.

“See?” Meg said to Marta. “It’s the cap.”

Walt leaned back to whisper something to the waitress.

“Oh, it’s already taken care of,” the woman said cheerfully.

“What?”

She pulled the checkbook out of her apron and reached across the table to hand it to Marta.

“No, no, no,” Walt said. “I—we—this was going to be our treat.”

“And now it’s mine,” said Marta, taking a big bite of cake. “You snooze, you lose.”

Meg laughed and laughed and laughed.

When they got to the house, Marta grabbed her by the collar and kissed her in the foyer, and it felt reminiscent of their first kiss and nothing like it at the same time.

“I love you,” Meg said. “I just realized I don’t think I’ve told you yet today.”

Marta smiled at her, slow and sweet. “I love you, too, Meg Thrombey. Welcome home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’ve reached the end. I hope the journey was worthwhile. 
> 
> If you’ve got any literally anything to say, please leave a comment. Sometimes, I feel like I’m shouting into the void here.


End file.
